


Untitled and unfinished sequel to Disenchantment

by Herself_nyc



Series: Disenchantment [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:27:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2232393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herself_nyc/pseuds/Herself_nyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Attempted sequel to Disenchantment.  Though never finished, it's fun so far as it goes, so I'm putting it out here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled and unfinished sequel to Disenchantment

**Author's Note:**

> Like _Disenchantment_ , this tale is set more than a decade after the final episode of BtVS. In the 'verse of this story, Spike was not a part of the events of AtS, and Angel is still running the LA office of Wolfram & Hart.
> 
> I've taken a few liberties with Highgate Cemetery.
> 
>  
> 
> Disclaimer:All hail Joss from whom all these characters flow

"Really, I find you more attractive this way," Buffy said.

"With my head wrapped in a towel an' reeking of bleach?"

"No ... " She giggled. "You know what I mean." Her fingers itsy-bitsy-spidered up his bare back. "All milky ... silky ... and ... nothing else rhymes with that. Darn."

"Rilke. Not pertinent though."

"It's Ril-kuh." 

"Whazzat, pet?" 

"Ril-kuh. Not Ril-kee. I remember that from college." 

Spike shrugged. "What, from the five minutes you spent there?" 

She ignored that, continued talking to him in her low satiny voice, the voice that was going to change his mood. "And the way you can fuck all night, because you know I need that ... you do know, don't you? I need you, Spike. The way you make love to me, the things you say ... so exciting. So sweet. And you don't get all stinky and I don't wake up stuck to you. You're nice and cool to lie next to."

"An' you think that's a plus, do you? Wait'll we find ourselves at the North Pole an' you without your mittens."

" _Spike._ I'm trying--"

"I know what you're trying. Time to rinse this out now." He started up and banged into the bathroom, shutting the door hard. 

Buffy drifted over to the window. This wasn't going well. After their crisis on the freighter, after he'd softened, and laughed, and taken her in his arms, saying _There's never been one like you, Slayer,_ she'd thought it was going to be all right. 

The light, unanimous feeling didn't last. The demon, the demon's hungers, plucked constantly at his nerves. In the two days and nights they spent on shipboard, he wouldn't be soothed. It took a little while for her to grasp that though he left her for hours at a time to prowl around the bowels of the vessel, he wasn't feeding even on rats. Did he think he could starve the demon out?

Or starve her out? He refused to touch her.

She couldn't bear it, his frustration, his hunger, his rejection of himself. Of her.

She'd climbed up into his bunk, where he lay facing the cold grey wall, and bared her neck. It felt like the easiest thing she'd ever done, offering herself to him.

"Spike--take what you need." He'd refuse, as Angel had once refused, but then he'd absorb her willingness, her trust, through the sound of her voice, through her smell and touch. He'd turn and take her in his arms, his bite would hurt for a moment and then turn to pleasure; he'd hold her close and satisfy himself, and that would satisfy her. Afterwards they'd both be restored to clarity and calm.

Instead he roared and shoved her out of the bunk. She hit her head on the bulkhead so hard that everything blinked out for a few seconds. When she could see again, he was gone. 

The freighter put in that morning. She searched for him without success all over the ship. At noon, beneath a relentless sun, she was forced to disembark with the rest of the displaced islanders. 

She got a hotel room, bought herself some clothes and other necessaries in shops where the soft sibilants of Portuguese sounded around her, and in her hot bath considered, in a confused reluctant way, calling Willow, buying a plane ticket. Both seemed like admissions of defeat.

At sundown she went back to the harbor, but the freighter, made late by its rescue mission, was already gone, and it wasn't so easy, at a port of this size, to figure out what was what. After a couple of hours of scaling fences, pacing around, eluding security guards while extending her slayer senses to the warren of shipping containers and customs sheds, she gave up.

She was sleepily drinking a last beer at the cafe outside her hotel, grateful for the late night breeze that dried her sweat into a sticky film, when he slipped into the empty chair at her side.

Without quite looking at her, he muttered, "--sorry. Not coping too well."

She stared at her beer. The waiter appeared; Spike motioned for another bottle.

His fingers sketched over her bruised temple. "This ... after I promised I'd never hurt you again ... this's no good." 

She sighed. "It doesn't matter." 

"Of course it matters." He looked at his hands, fisted together. "I was afraid. Could barely hold myself back from biting you. You don't know, Buffy, you can't know what that hunger's like--"

"But I really wanted you to feed off me."

"Buffy ... " The waiter appeared, setting down a beer mat and the bottle, adding another little dish to the pile already on the table that marked her tab. "That's not something you should want. You don't want it, really, no matter what you think." 

"Don't tell me what I feel!" 

"No. All right. Tellin' you what _I_ feel, then. Think you an' me--" He stammered, stopped.

She waited, and when he continued silent, she said, "I'm not going to help you say it." The words ground out through clenched teeth; she was aware suddenly of the tightness of her jaw, of her whole body. 

"I'm not good for you like this. Undead. You always knew that, back in the day." 

"I know different now. I knew it then too, after you came back to me. I loved you then, but there was no time, with the First using you, and Caleb there, and the potentials. I wanted to be with you, though. I wanted it every single day." 

"No need to hash that over again. Didn't expect anything from you then." 

"But I _want_ you to expect things from me. I want you to know there's nothing you don't have the right to expect. We belong to each other." 

"Oh, Buffy ...." 

Her insides turned to granite. She stared straight ahead, at the lights of the cafe across the square, a mirror image of the one where they sat, at the entwined couples moving past, at the equestrian statue of some conquering marauder dimly outlined against the dark sky. 

"Spike, is this some kind of fucked up nobility, or is it plain old cowardice?" 

"You need to think it's cowardice, then think it, pet." 

"So you leave me. And what'll happen then? I'll certainly forget you by next Tuesday, just like I've forgotten you for the last ten years. I'll marry the very nice man I'm sure to meet on Wednesday, and I'll be so very very happy for the rest of my days. And you--what'll you do, Spike? Defy your soul and go evil again? Prey on little blondes so you can feel that good guilty pang every time you--"

"Stop it! Buffy--" 

She turned slowly to regard him. She'd already become used to him as brown-skinned, lined; his smooth paleness jarred her.

"Spike. Think carefully before you do this. Did you work so hard to turn me from an enemy into a friend ... to win my love ... to just walk out on me now? I know you're troubled by all that's happened, but is that really more important than that we've found each other again? Is it worth hurting me over?--hurting yourself? How will either of us be better off on our own?"

He couldn't even look at her. "I'm not alive, Buffy. I'm not a man. You're older now, I know you want ... things you didn't use to think much about. An' should have them. I'm no good for you for any of those. I'm no good for you at all."

Tears scalded her eyes, her throat closed against speech, against breath. Her hand jerked, sending the bottle flying. Beer flooded onto the pavement at her feet, its grainy smell filling the air. 

She rounded on him. "Blood and pulse and all that _crap_ \--they're beside the point! You _know_ it doesn't have to matter! We're both free now, we can do whatever we want! But _you_ can't love unless it's kinky and painful and wrong!" She started up, upsetting her chair with a clatter, and rushed blindly towards the hotel. 

He caught her at the door. Passersby paused to watch them, keeping their distance. She wheeled around. "What do you want? Do you want me to hit you? Because when I did that, you couldn't get enough of me! When I punched you and insulted you, you were always there! But the minute I try to give myself to you, you're all _No You Don't_ , you're all _It Can Never Be!_ Well, fuck you, Spike! I'm not going to beat you up to make you love me!"

She dashed into the lobby, rushed up the stairs to her room. He was on her heels, close enough the whole way that she felt him in every upraised hair on her nape. His hands gripped her shoulders, he was mouthing her neck even as she wrestled the key into the lock. They fell into the room together, slammed against the wall. He jerked her around to face him; they staggered towards the bed, fell across it; hands twisting and pulling on clothes. She chewed on his mouth, pulled his hair; his cock, suddenly free, stabbed into her. She wasn't quite ready, but she'd wanted him to seize her, confess his need for her with his body. The friction, the force of him grinding her into the mattress, cut the straining knot inside her. Buffy fucked him back hard, groaning in short sharp gasps. 

It wasn't like the island. It was like Sunnydale 2002, except the words they spit at each other were a little different, and he was the one who rolled away when it was over, no cuddling, no conversation.

That was last night. 

Now he called out to her, and she joined him in the bathroom.

"This look all right?" His hair, already cut short again, was once more white-blond as well. 

Buffy put her hand through it; the wet strands trying to curl. "Yes, it's fine." She couldn't help glancing in the mirror, where she was and he was not. He'd surprised her that morning by his determination to make himself into _Spike_ again. Blond and shorn and black-clad. It was some kind of rebuke. Especially after she'd told him overnight how much she liked his curly honey-colored hair. How soft it was against her breast.

"Gonna miss that, aren't you?" he said now, gesturing at the empty glass. On the island they'd used a mirror to watch themselves fucking, an unimagined novelty she didn't think she'd ever get her fill of.

She dropped her gaze quickly, feeling caught. "N--no. How did you always look so pulled-together back in Sunnydale?"

"By feel. Blind people do it. Tho'--remember the five an' dime on the main drag? They had one of those camera set-ups in the window, you could see yourself on the monitor. Used to keep it on all night. Sometimes I'd happen by there, be able to check my look."

"We could get something like that. And then we could watch ourselves fool around again."

He didn't respond. 

" _Spike._ The reflection thing is not important. You're important."

"Yeah. Long as I can service you an' your slayer-size libido whenever you fancy, nothing else matters. S'what tame vampires are good for. You used to hate yourself for it, but now I've got a soul an' all, you tell yourself it's okay, innit? Okay to pass up all the real men you should choose from, to satisfy your dirty little kink."

The expression on his face, more than his cruel words, made her tear up. 

"What?" he jeered. "Just told me so yourself! Same as ever. You praise my cock an' how I get you off, an' that's all. Got the gall to say you like me better undead 'cause I last longer in your bloody twat than when I was alive."

She flinched, as he must've meant her to. "It's ... I ... it's because--I'm hot for you. We're hot for each other. We always were ... even before we ... but it's not the only thing we have. You _know_ it isn't. I'm sorry I mentioned it. I'm not trying to make you feel bad." 

He pushed past her into the room, let the towel drop from his hips, snatched up his jeans. "Get an eyeful of it now, Slayer, because I'm puttin' your toy away."

He did up his fly buttons, his back half turned. She could see his profile; see the look of disgust, as if he was trying to choke down something foul. 

"Spike, _why_ are you so angry with me?" 

He shook his head, face creased in frustration. "Twelve years ago ... wearing that amulet was what I had to do, all there was to do--to make some kind of amends, to you an' all of 'em. Was right that I should end that way. An' I was glad for the chance to make love to you before I went, to feel you touch me, open to me, without that shudder of hatred. Gave me a right good send-off, you did ... an' I never expected or even wanted a future. I was glad to die after all I'd done, thinkin' you'd go on out an' _live_." He sank down on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, shoulders jerking. "Felt a bit of ... I dunno ... grace, when I snuffed it. But now I'm back at square one, full of that dirty hunger ... filthy blood-drinking _parasite_. Why? Why's this happening to me?" 

"Spike ... why can't you just take it on trust? That we're back together because we're just supposed to be? Let me make you happy." 

He gave her a searing, incredulous look. "Trust!" He went for the door, his hand bouncing off the knob as if it scalded him. "Fucking hell, I can't even walk out an' leave you 'cause it's daylight out!" He was crying now, although she couldn't see his face. His agony sucked all the air out of the room.

Her every instinct was to plead with him, to argue, to seduce him away from this roaring despair. She wanted to tackle him, cover his body with hers, grind against him until his objections were crushed and obliterated. 

He was _Spike_. Spike wasn't supposed to hate himself. She had to do something, she had to make him see how wrong he was. 

But as she surged towards him, to wrench him around and somehow _force him to understand_ , a phrase floated into her head. _If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it's yours._

Stuff like that didn't get to be a post-ironic joke without first passing through the realm of truth. Oh God. Having thought of it, she wanted immediately to repudiate the idea. But she couldn't. It was another one of those right things she was sworn to do.

She drew back. "I'll go then, since you can't." 

He gaped at her. 

"It's okay," she said, as her heart fluttered in her chest like a half-crushed bird on the pavement. "I think I understand what you feel. Anyway, I'm going to respect your decision." 

"That's ... well, all right, Slayer." 

She picked up her bag, looked around for things she might want to take with her, procrastinating now she'd decided. "What are you going to do?" 

"I don't know." 

Fear lapped at her mind. "I hope you'll be careful. There's slayers everywhere now, you understand that, right? Thousands upon thousands. You can't just ... feed the way you were used to, before the chip. I don't know where to tell you to go where you'll be safe if you're going to do that." 

"Buffy--" 

"And one other thing. If you decide you don't want to continue, will you contact me before you ... before you do anything? So I don't go on waiting for you when ... when there's nothing to wait for?" 

"Christ, Slayer. _Christ._ " 

"Some things have to be said. I don't know what you mean to do, but if you're no more, I claim my right to mourn you like a wife, even though ... even if ... and I ... Obviously I can't reach you now. I don't have what you need." 

"Nobody does. Don't know what I bloody need. Don't want you to wait for me at all." 

"Do you really mean that?" 

The tears ran down his face, and she thought he'd never looked more beautiful than he did in that moment. "Yes." Then he gasped, clapped a hand to his mouth. 

She could see that if she went to him and took him in her arms, he'd tumble into her embrace and that would be that. 

For another night, maybe. Before he started all over again. 

Instead she went to the desk and scribbled on a sheet of the hotel stationary. "Here's my address in London. The phone numbers, email. I wish I could say I won't wait for you, because that would make you feel better about this, maybe. Only I can't. I'm your wife, whether you take me or not. I'll be waiting every day, every night, waiting and hoping." She looked up. He made no move to take the paper from her outstretched hand. "Oh Spike. You always waited for me. Even when I wasn't coming back at all, you waited for me." She laid the sheet on the dresser, grabbed up her shoulderbag, and went to the door. "I won't be back here until late tonight. So, don't feel you have to rush out or anything when it gets dark. Take your time."

She made it to the other side of the square before the scalding tears gushed out.  
  
  


Buffy had never thought of cemeteries as anything else than hunting grounds. But Highgate, with its huge old trees and ivy-choked mausoleums, its elaborate Victorian statuary of angels and cherubs and beautiful young girls, a tightly populated necropolis, was different. She visited it with Willow on a Sunday afternoon just a couple of days after she returned to London after her aborted sailing adventure. They took the official tour--Karl Marx and a bunch of other three-named luminaries Willow got all excited about, led by a flutey-voiced docent in thick stockings and sturdy tweeds. She'd been bored with the antiqueness of it all, but the atmosphere of the place--its silent green solemnity--nonetheless seeped in on her, with a hold that lasted through a nearly sleepless night. She wasn't sure why, but the next day, without mentioning anything, she went back there on her own. It was raining; she wandered the more obscure paths beneath her umbrella, seeing no one; pausing to eye the names on the marble and granite memorials. Everything was grey: the pavement, the statues stained by the rain, even the leaves were grey-green. From here the traffic noises were muffled, and it might've been any time in the last century at least.

Nobody had been interred here in decades; it wasn't a place, for all its gothic splendor, for vampires to nest. Too dead for them. Nothing set off her slayer instinct. And yet she sensed there was something for her here, something waiting for her discovery. 

After an hour, she came across it. 

Enclosed by a knee-high wrought-iron fence, a modest mausoleum bore the name _Hinchliffe_. 

She stepped over the barrier, feeling like Alice stepping through the looking glass. The rain stilled, as if to give her more room and quiet for her inspection. The mausoleum was surrounded by obelisks and markers of different sizes and shapes, memorializing Henrys and Letitias and Johns and Georgianas, all devoted husbands, loving wives, dearly departed fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. Towards the back of the enclosure, she saw the name she hadn't realized, until this moment, she was seeking. 

_William Henry Hinchliffe, BA. b. July 2, 1848. d.April 1880. Loving son, brother, friend._

Awe made her slightly light-headed. Buffy knelt; traced the carving with her fingertips. His grave. Where he'd fought his way to the surface, transformed all against his will into a monster. 

A monster who was glad to be. Who'd boasted to her years ago of his exploits, his pleasures. Of trading up the food chain. 

His recent transformation, days ago on the ship as they fled the exploding island of his mysterious humanity ... was no welcome ascension. 

That one was just pure suffering. 

"Not the finest stone here. But then, this is far from the finest plot in the place." 

She started. A slender older man with a bright inquisitive eye was peering at her from the other side of the fence. Well, she amended, focusing on him, not _old_ , younger than Giles, actually, but his fair hair made him look almost snowy-headed at first glance. 

"That is," he continued, "it's not a plot to get many visitors. No-one wanders off the tour and fetches up here." 

"I'm not on the tour. Not today." Buffy rose, grasping the top of the stone. 

"Ah? You were rather caressing that marker. I wonder what can the attraction be." 

_And I wonder, what's it your business?_ "Oh, I ... I'm just a friend of the family." 

"Are you now?" He brightened further, and stepped over the barrier. "Well, I'm the family." He held out a hand. "It's always nice to meet a friend." 

Buffy stared, blinking. "You ... you're a Hinchliffe?" 

"At this point, my dear, I am _the_ Hinchliffe." 

"Oh." The hand was still there; not to take it would be rude. The handshake was pleasantly firm; his skin warm, despite being moist from the rain. He carried, she noticed, a very neatly rolled black umbrella, which he obviously hadn't unfurled for the shower that was just over. His tweed jacket was furred all over with tiny droplets. What was it with oldie English guys and tweed? 

He was wearing a paisley silk what was it called--foulard--around his neck, too, instead of a tie. Which made him look kinda gay. 

"That's my great-grand-uncle you've got hold of there. And here's his older brother, Bartholomew, who is my great-grandfather." He pointed at a more ornate cross just behind and to the side of it, with vines and flowers carved into its face. "Old Bart begat Matthew, and old Matt begat Alastair, and Alastair, right here," he touched another stone, "who is my father, is the last of us who'll lie in Highgate, now they've turned it from a burying ground into a tourist attraction." He shook his head. "As I'm the last of 'em, I'd hoped to get a dispensation, but so far it doesn't look good." 

"I'm sorry." 

"Well, I'm still trying. I hope to live another thirty-five, forty years--we're very long-lived, we Hinchliffes. That is, when no one kills us. I shall keep at it until I wear them down!" 

"Um ... that's good. I mean--I hope you do!" 

"So ... a friend of the family, hmmm?" The man tilted his head and squinted at her. "Maybe so, maybe so. Still, you don't know, my dear, there's no body in that grave!" 

Buffy started again, and lifted her hand away from William's stone. This was the last thing she expected to hear. She knew it, but how could he? 

"No body there, and none here either, alas," he said, touching the stone beside it. Buffy hadn't noticed that one yet. _Anne, Loving Wife of Petronius Hinchliffe, devoted mother of Bartholomew, Jasper, William, Daphne, Phoebe._

_Petronius? Whoa._

"Shall I tell you why?" 

She glanced up. Her new acquaintance smiled, a smile that was at once smug, eager, and friendly. "It was the most glamourous thing ever to happen to the family since ... well, since old Ezekial Hinchliffe made his fortune. He was our patriarch, you know. He came to London about 1730, and before him, the Hinchliffes were--well, in short, nowhere. But never mind him. You want to know about poor great-great-grandmother and the frightful uncle William. Terribly sad, it is. Really. I say glamourous, but what I really mean is that it's terribly terribly tragic. And--" his eyes sparkled, " _sensational_." 

"What is?" Buffy said. 

He leaned closer to her, as if there was a pressing crowd of strangers he wanted to keep this from, and dropped into a loud whisper. "We have it on the most excellent authority that they were _vampires_." 

Buffy blinked. How _could_ he know that? And what did he mean by _they_? Could that mean Spike had turned his own mother? 

_Aw, shit._ That explained a _lot_. 

"Poor Anne didn't survive the night she died and rose up from the dead, and William was never seen again afterwards. Old Bart arranged funerals and mourning and all that was proper, and kept the whole thing hushed up. A great one for propriety, was old Bart. Especially where family was concerned. Propriety, and accuracy--as you can see, there's no date here for William's death. Just the month. Because Bart couldn't be sure, y'see. Uncle William went missing the night of the 12th, and came home again as a vampire on the 15th, but there's no way to really know _when he died ...._ " He patted the top of Spike's grave marker. "Just as there's no way to know anything else about him, unfortunately. That naughty uncle William may well be extant yet. All we know is that he bit his poor mother, and then apparently thought better of it afterwards. No Hinchliffe's seen him since that night!" He looked triumphant. "But--you must tell me what brought you here." 

Buffy clenched her fingers harder around the moist stone to stop herself trembling. "How ... how do you know--I mean, where are you getting all this?" 

"Ah ah ah. If you are always going to answer a question with a question, we shan't get on very well. I've been coming here all my life, and today is the first time anyone's taken an interest." 

She considered lying. She could say that she knew a Hinchliffe back in the states--was doing some geneological research on his behalf--but that these weren't the ones her friend was related to, after all, so sorry to disappoint him, goodbye. 

Her bright-eyed inquisitor, a gentleman if ever there was one, would have to suppress his curiosity, and accept that. Good--except that her curiosity about him was just as strong--stronger--and she couldn't bear to walk away now. 

She sighed. "Vampires are sort of a hobby of mine, you could say. I know a lot about them." 

"You know a lot about them?" The antic gleam in his eye was suddenly gone. He looked ... disconcerted. "You know a lot about them ... But how could you? I mean, stories, of course, only--" 

"He told me once that he had to claw himself out of his own coffin, so--" She stopped, realizing too late what she was revealing. 

From disconcerted her inquisitor moved quickly to confused and wary. 

"What ... what are you talking about?" 

"Nothing. Nothing! Forget it. I should go. I mean--I have to go." 

"But--not before you tell me--how did you know this was supposedly a vampire's grave? It's only our little family legend--though Clive and I do trot it out at parties rather--but everyone knows it's just my bit of fun. How could word of it have reached _you_ , young lady?" 

She was cornered. Considered fleeing--a burst of speed and he'd be left far behind. She'd have done it too, except that at that moment, he tilted his head, regarding her with a quiet anxious kindliness that reminded her so much of-- 

"You--right now you kinda look like him. It's weird." Again, the words slipped from her lips without forethought. 

Bewilderment. "Like--like who?" 

"William." She whispered, blushing. This was a muddle, and she couldn't think how to extricate herself. 

"But my dear young lady, how could you possibly know anything about him? You are beginning to alarm me. Besides ... " gently, as if she might break at the news, "vampires ... that's all nonsense, you know." 

Buffy's mind raced. She could agree that they were all nonsense, and go her way, leaving the man--Spike's great-grand-nephew--to believe that she was, as he would probably term it, potty. But if she did that, he'd be gone from her life forever, and she didn't want that--she was already thinking of him as a sort of relative of her own. And she had so few of those, she couldn't squander them. Especially not now that Spike was ... wasn't .... 

With quiet matter-of-factness, she said, "Vampires are real. I know it sounds crazy, to the uninitiated. But I thought you were initiated, because you said-- Anyway, I know the vampire William. Though that's not the name he mostly goes by anymore." 

At this, the man stepped back. Not just his mouth but his whole thin face seemed to form an O of astonishment. "Good God--how could that be? You've met him? Spoken with him?" 

She took a deep breath. "Yes--for years. You're right to think he's still around, he is, at least he was--he was five days ago. Which was the last time I saw him." 

"Five days? But--how could you possibly--? My dear, you are rather alarming, you know!" 

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours." 

He almost leapt back then. "Miss! I wonder at you--!" 

"You said you had an eyewitness account. Well--I'd like to see it. In return, I'll answer your questions about William." 

"Ah ... oh. Right you are. Well. I must admit I am tempted. Only ... ." 

Buffy held up her hands. "Crazy American, right? Except, not. Really. I'm harmless. My name is Buffy. Buffy Summers." 

"Lionel Hinchliffe." 

"Lionel. We could go somewhere for coffee?" 

"Tea." 

"Tea then. Sure. I'll even buy." 

"You will not. Whatever sort of a gentleman would I be, if--" 

She smiled. That's just what she'd expected him to say.  
  
  
  


* * *

 

 

 

"A vampire slayer." He seemed confounded. Between them, a brown tea pot, two cups, and a couple of cake plates filled the small round table. They were sitting at the back of a busy caff with fogged windows and tiled walls, talking low under the din of other customers and the cheerful jangle of Radio One. 

"I don't usually let civilians in on that." 

"A vampire slayer. An itty bitty _girl_ like you?" Suddenly something broke across his face. "Ah! I get it now! Jeremy and Ivor put you up to this, didn't they?" 

"Uh ... no. I don't know any Jeremy and Ivor." 

"No, no, no, they did!" He was laughing now. "Of course they did! They always do tease me about it, ever since I used the story to completely high-jack one of their so-so-tiresome dinner parties. I had Lord Lansdowne just _eating_ out of my hand, and they've never forgiven me for it. They knew today was one of my days to go up to Highgate and see what needed tidying in the family plot. How much are they paying you for this charming little performance, my dear?" 

"Nothing. I mean--it's not a performance. I'm telling you the truth." 

"Well, go on, go on. I'm happy to stand you tea and hear whatever little tale they worked up for you. I'm nothing if not a good sport." 

All at once, Buffy was as exhausted as if she'd been pummeling monsters for the last few hours. If he wasn't going to believe her--! "Please, Mr Hinchliffe. It was _your_ tale I wanted to hear! I wish you'd tell me about him!" All at once she was sobbing. She hadn't cried since getting back to London; had thought the was past tears. It was almost a relief to find there were yet more. 

"But ... my dear, surely this isn't necessary--? You are taking all this a bit far!" He glanced over his shoulder, but no one else in the place was taking the slightest notice of them. 

"It's a long long story, I can't begin to here ... but you see, I _need_ to talk about him, and I can't, not to my friends, they don't understand, they don't know him like I do. They hate him! They always have! Even after he got his soul, sacrified himself to avert the apocalypse, they never forgave him, never. But if you won't believe me, then ...." 

"But ... oh my. You really weren't put up to this at all, were you?" 

She shook her head violently. "I know it sounds weird and you probably think I broke out of a loony bin, but if you'd just _listen_ \--" 

Stumbling over her tongue, back-tracking, skimming over enormous events in a word or two, she tried to tell the story that was so familiar to her she could easily overlook the strangeness of it. How she was the slayer--the One Girl In All The World To Stand Against the Vampires. How William the Bloody, known as Spike, had come to Sunnydale to kill her. Angelus, Drusilla, the Initiative, the chip, Spike's falling in love with her, her death and resurrection, their ugly affair, his soul and sacrifice, and how she'd found him alive ten years later, only to witness his loss of humanity. Lionel kept his gaze rivetted on her but she could tell that he wasn't really taking it in, and had probably gone back to his first theory about her--the potty one--after rejecting his second theory--that she'd been hired to pull his leg. Had he not been so courteous, she thought he'd have denounced her and stormed out. 

"I know it sounds--well, cracked. But it's all true. If I had more time I could tell it properly--I'm not a very good describer. I'm usually more the strong, quippy type." 

"I daresay." He already seemed a hundred miles away; he gestured to the waitress for the bill. 

On the street he seemed to look through her, thanking her for what he termed "an illuminating afternoon," practically fading away before her eyes. 

"Mr Hinch--Lionel--wait a minute. Please don't go quite yet. I know I don't have any proof about William--I don't have a photograph of him--God, I wish I did!--or any of his family secrets I can impress you with, because back in the day, I never asked him for any. It's complicated. And I can't slay a vampire for you right here--there aren't any around at this hour--but--look--I can show you my slayer strength." She led him around the corner, into a quiet sidestreet of terraced houses and parked cars. In a moment she went from standing beside him to perching on the flat roof of the caff. 

Lionel gawked up at her. "How--how did you get up there?" 

She leapt down again. "I told you. Slayers are strong and quick and agile. See?" There was a gleaming blue Vespa scooter parked near where they stood. She lifted it, and held it over her head. Then, grinning, she feinted to toss it at him. "Here, catch!" Lionel cried out and leapt back. She set it down, and examined her hands. "Darn. Oily." 

"Do borrow my handkerchief." His voice trembled. 

As she wiped her fingers, she looked at him from under her lashes. His whole demeanor had changed; he'd paled, so his face was almost as white as Spike's, and he returned her gaze with a new and humble respect, tinged with fear. 

"Are you starting to understand now? About the slayer thing?" 

Lionel nodded. "You ... you are undeniably an extraordinary young woman. But ... ." 

Buffy laid her hand lightly on his sleeve. "Don't be afraid of me. I'm not trying to trick you. I know your uncle. He's a vampire, yes. I love him, and I believe he still loves me, but he's lost and depressed, and he's gone off--I don't know where. I'm _so_ lonely for him, and all alone with it. And then here you are, and--I'd like to know you. I'd like you to help me know him a little better." 

"I--I confess, my head is rather spinning at all this--" 

"Look, I'd really like to see that eyewitness account you mentioned. Would you show it to me?" 

"It's at home." 

"Do you have time? Please?"  
  
It grew dark as they rode. They emerged from the taxi in Kensington, in front of a four-storey white cake-box of a house, that sat detached in a large garden, walled in with a wrought-iron fence. It was too dark to see much, except that the other houses all around seemed similar: elegant, rather blank to Buffy's eye, protected by walls and shade trees. She followed Lionel up to the door. The house was dark, except for an orangey glow that made the glass of the fan-light above the door sparkle. 

"Clive won't be home until late, so I shall have you all to myself," he said, rather gallantly, Buffy thought, as he fitted the key in the lock. He'd already told her in the taxi that his house was _the_ house--where William had lived all his life, and where, according to the eyewitness account, he'd turned and slain his mother. "And very little altered, in the last hundred and fifty years, considering of course that it's all fitted up with modern conveniences. We've always been a family for keeping the old things, and disliking change." Her heart was thubbing crazily in her chest as she waited for the door to open. She wondered if this was how Spike felt, the first time he'd found his way up to her bedroom. Her inner sanctum. 

"I always thought," she murmured, looking at the expansive foyer, the dark polished wood of the newel posts, the gilt-framed mirror over the little marble table that held the mail, the chandelier of glass droplets gleaming overhead, "that he was some sort of thug when he was alive. That's what he very much wanted us to think. Like Bill Sikes in _Oliver!_ But towards the end I started to get that that wasn't true." She followed Lionel through a tall pair of double doors, elaborately carved with stylized flowers, into a sitting room that looked, to her unpractised eye, like a movie set for one of those Merchant Ivory yawners Willow always liked so much. 

He lit a couple of lamps, and knelt to start a fire in the grate, where the makings were already neatly laid to hand. 

"Do help yourself to a drink if you like. You might pour me one as well." 

A table in a corner held a couple of crystal decanters and some small glasses. There was a similar set-up at Giles and Olivia's house, so she was able to ask, with a modicum of confidence, "Scotch, or--?" 

"Scotch, of course." 

"Of course." She knew enough by now not to even _think_ the word 'ice,' and brought him the glass. "Is Clive your partner?" 

"He's my bit of fluff, yes," Lionel said. "Thank you, my dear. Take a seat there by the lamp, and I'll show you Old Bart's diary."  
  
  
  
She found the scrawly old-fashioned handwriting hard to read, so Lionel read it out loud to her. 

Bartholomew Hinchliffe, who, for reasons having to do with his in-laws' health and certain business arrangements, lived with his wife's parents rather than here in Number 66, was calling in to check on his ailing mother late one evening on the way back from his club. As he walked up to the door it opened, disgorging his brother William in the company of a young woman of not altogether respectable appearance; the two seemed drunk, perhaps--how else to explain William's manner, which was peremptory and hostile? In the flickering gaslight glow there seemed to be something wrong with his face--with his and that of the woman, who came up quite close to him, grinning in a horrible way, her eyes seeming to gleam like two yellow beacons--but it was difficult to tell just what the matter was, he moved so quickly, grabbing his companion and yanking her away as she mewled a protest. Alarmed, Bartholomew pursued his brother, caught at his arm, beseeched him to pause and explain himself. Beneath the streetlamp at the pavement's edge, there was nothing wrong with William's face after all, or the woman's, except that she was laughing like the low cheap creature she was, tugging on William and calling him silly names. William cursed him, saying "I'm out from under your delicate boot-heel now, Bart!" And then they were both gone, so immediately that it was more as if they'd flown away than ran. 

Turning back to the house, he found a scene of some disorder in the parlour: a small table overturned, ashes strewn on the carpet. Ringing did not bring the servants. Alarmed, he searched, beginning in the kitchen, advancing up the back stairs and down again, finding no one until he reached the bottom of the main stairs, where the upstairs maid, Bessie Stivers, lay in a faint. 

Her story was such an odd one that he'd have dismissed it out of hand if not for having himself seen his brother and the woman with their faces, as Bessie described them, _all bumpy and angry and the eyes like two coals a-glowin'_. 

Flora Squeers, the parlourmaid, let William and the strange woman into the house shortly after dusk; he'd been missing for three days, and Mrs H taken to her bed out of unease and the spasms of her illness, though insisting her son would return, and wanting no one sent for. She, Bessie, was in the kitchen with Cook and Joe Smollet, the coachman, when William and his lady friend appeared there, clutching poor Flora between them, and watched in frozen horror as they tore out her throat. Joe tried to save her, but Wm threw him across the room as if he was a rag, and after he hit the wall, he moved no more. After that, she and Cook tried to flee, but Cook was too large and old and slow to make it out of the room. She herself had scampered up the backstairs--why that and not out the kitchen door she couldn't say--but William caught her on the second landing, and she was sure she was a goner when he pressed her back against the wall, his horrid face close to hers. But then he'd said, _You always were a good girl, weren't you, Bessie? Good to mother._ He told her to run up to her room and stay there, on no account to leave or make a sound. 

And she did ... at least for a few hours--she couldn't be sure. But then her head cleared a bit, she thought of the mistress, and stole down to see what might be happening. Mrs H was no longer in her bed. Bessie snuck down the stairs in her stocking feet, and was in time to see, as she peered around the doorway into the parlour, how Mrs H was like William and the woman--her face all strange and monstrous. William struggled with her, and then--she was gone. Just--gone. Bessie couldn't understand it, but she knew she'd seen it with her own eyes--Mrs H fell to dust, like a sugar loaf when you splashed hot tea on it. Then the weird woman appeared--rushing right past Bessie, giving her the scare of her life, but not noticing her at all, so eager was she to throw herself upon William. He seemed sad and shocked at first, but then a moment later she distracted him, and _they committed a ... a natural act, right there on Mrs H's parlour sofa . . ._ Whereupon Bessie might have fainted, because the next thing she remembered was Mr B H rousing her from off the stairs with smelling salts. 

The drained bodies of Flora, Joe, and Cook were found stuffed into the pantry, their throats ravaged as if by animals. 

The conclusion, Bartholomew wrote, could only be one thing: his brother--and briefly his mother--were vampires. 

Lionel fell silent. 

Buffy glanced at him, incredulous. "How could you read that account and _not_ believe it? I mean--what did you think really happened here?" 

"I ... I don't know. Of course, the police were never called in. Bart had influence ... he was able to have the servants' deaths hushed up. I researched that at one time, and there's no mention of the murders in the public record as such. I suppose--I never really thought about it, one way or the other. It was a marvelous story, but couldn't possibly be true, not like that. William might have fallen under the sway of that woman, a woman of loose morals--perhaps she'd persuaded him to take opium or cocaine, or--who knows what. Under it's influence, perhaps they came here meaning to steal, to kill ... ." He stopped. 

"What?" 

"You're right, it doesn't add up. I mean--I've read William's diaries, his letters. Seen his pictures. They're all here. He was a gentleman, and a gentle man. He adored his mother. He was no killer. Never in a million years." 

"You have pictures? Why didn't you say so? Lionel--please show me the pictures!" 

Lionel didn't move. He was staring at the heavy leather diary open on his knees, as if seeing a ghost. "This ... this _is_ terrible. What William was turned into ... a murderous predator ... how can you love that? A vampire, a monster?" 

Buffy started to lay a hand on his arm, but Lionel flinched away, and rose. "Who are you? What are you? I've invited you into my home, and--oh God, are you one too? Is that what this is about? You've come to kill me too?" 

"No! Please--no--I know it's confusing, and yes, it's terrible, what Spike--William--did. I didn't know about it before either." And she realized she didn't want to think about it too much right now. "But he changed. When I knew him--let me explain. Let me try again to tell you." 

"I don't know--I think you'd better go!" 

Instead, Buffy refilled his glass, and put it into his hand, which trembled. She knelt beside him on the sofa. "Please--I'm all alone. I love him--so much!--and my friends have never understood. Right now, even he doesn't understand, which is why he's gone away from me after we were reunited, when we should've had a chance to be happy. So when I met you ... I know it sounds weird, but I feel sort of close to you. Because you're related to him, you're family. I was sure when we started talking that _you'd_ understand. I could tell you'd love a love story. You do, don't you?" 

At this, Lionel looked up. "My dear ... you've bewildered me utterly." 

"I know. I'll unbewilder you now. Drink your drink, and listen ... ."  
  
  
  
Lionel made her, to her astonishment and growing confidence, into a better storyteller than she'd ever imagined she could be. The intense way he listened, and the moments he chose to ask questions--and the questions he asked, all calm and to the point--helped her to be calm, and organized, and descriptive. She filled him in on her active slaying career and her six year acquaintance with Spike, leading up to his destruction. Skipped over the ensuing decade in a few sentences, then took up with her visit to the island, and how she found him there. By that time, she and Lionel were holding hands, which might've been weird but definitely wasn't, and as she looked at him she could trace the family resemblance--something about the eyes, and the set of the mouth--so clearly that it amazed her she hadn't seen it at once that afternoon. Talking to him felt like the easiest, the most natural, the most wonderful thing in her world. She found words for things she'd never been able to articulate before: the ambivalence she'd held towards Spike from the beginning, and the complexity of her emotions during their affair, and after. How she'd fallen in love with him when it all seemed too late. Her joy at finding Hinchliffe on the island, and recognizing him. Her further joy when he remembered himself. Their plans for marriage, children, a home in London, working together with the Council. And how, after the volcano erupted, it all went wrong. 

"His humanity was tied to the island. He couldn't leave it and stay human. I didn't get that at the time, I thought it was because the volcano erupted and the island sank. But now I'm sure, even if that hadn't happened, he'd have gone vampy again as soon as we got out to sea. That's the problem with magic, there's always a catch to it. Often a really sharp pointy catch that rips a big hole in you." 

"I see. But then also--as you said--if you weren't there, he'd have fallen victim again to Drusilla. It seems there was no way poor William was to remain human at all." 

"Yeah, but that's no help. He hates it. He has his soul, he's not dangerous anymore, I don't care what he says, I trust him--but he can't accept it. He was so unhappy, all twitchy and angry and self-loathing, like--like he was poisoned. Poisoned by himself." 

She didn't realize that her eyes were leaking again until Lionel's thumb was on her cheek, gently wiping the tears away. He drew her to him, and she laid her head on his shoulder without resistance. 

"You poor dear girl, what an ordeal your life has been. I am glad you found me, we shall see if we can't look after you and cheer you up a bit." 

Buffy sniffled. "I am cheerful!" 

"Yes, you are," he murmured, his hand patting her hair in a gentle paternal way, "you're terribly terribly strong and resilient. What a good girl you are." 

He said it just the way Spike said it, that phrase she associated with him alone: _You're my good girl, aren't you, Slayer? My good little Buffy._ Anybody else calling her a good girl like that would've filled her with rage--what a stupid, condescending remark! But from Spike ... and now from Lionel ... it made her feel safe. Small and safe and out of the fray, like when she was a child curling up on her mother's lap. She'd lost all track of time, and had no desire to do anything but sit on that sofa with Lionel, watching the fire burn low, listening to the grandfather clock give out its stentorious ticking. This place felt like home.  
  
  
  


"Li! Are you up?" 

"In here, old darling. We've got company." 

Buffy sat upright, pulling her hand from Lionel's. Here came the "bit of fluff." Would he be awful? Ruin everything? 

The man who walked with firm tread into the parlour was over six feet tall in his grey bespoke suit, white shirt and dark tie, his face craggy and unsmiling under a thatch of thick dark grey hair. If anything, he was a bit older than Lionel. Buffy's first impression was that he was of the same humorless Dead White Males tribe as the late and by-her-unlamented Quentin Travers. 

He crossed the room, dropped a kiss lightly on the top of Lionel's head, and turned to her. "Who is our charming guest?" 

"This is Miss Buffy Summers. Buffy, Clive Thornycroft. I met her this afternoon up at Highgate. She is great-grand-uncle William's fiancée." 

"Is that a fact?" Well well. You must tell me about that." He shook her hand, just as if Lionel's remark was perfectly sensible. "Can I freshen your drinks? God, what an evening." 

"It was your Old Boys Dinner tonight, wasn't it?" 

"Yes. The usual suspects were drunk, and Mathers spoke for an hour but probably not even he could tell you what about." Drink in hand, Clive collapsed into a chair opposite. "It seems I missed a far more interesting and meaningful evening right here at home." 

"You did." Lionel smiled. "I've learned some marvelous things. Uncle William really _is_ a vampire. Buffy here is intimately acquainted with him. And he is yet extant. Although whereabouts unknown at present." 

Clive sat forward, the crystal glass clasped in his two large hands. "Is that a fact?" He seemed perfectly willing to believe it, without going through Lionel's Seven Stages of Denial. Perhaps he'd learned over the years to trust his partner's judgement, Buffy thought. That must be nice. 

"Buffy is a vampire slayer. Did you know that there's always a vampire slayer, and that she's always a girl? Astonishing. Buffy has averted numerous apocalypses and returned from the dead twice." 

"How exhausting. And I'm sure you've forgotten to feed her so much as a sandwich, Li." Clive got to his feet. "If I didn't take care of these things, we'd all starve, and no guest would ever come to us twice. What shall it be, Buffy? Ham and cheese, or egg mayonnaise?"  
  
  
  
It was after three in the morning when she got home. Willow was asleep; she'd left a lamp on in the sitting room. Buffy swung herself onto the couch, and scrabbled at the big padded envelope Lionel had handed her when the mini-cab pulled up outside the house. "I thought you might like to look at these without me hovering. Have them copied if you like. Bring them back when you're done. No hurry." 

A leather diary. Some letters, tied up in ribbon. And a sheaf of pictures that slid out onto her lap, almost spilling to the floor before she caught them. They were of various sizes, but all printed on heavy card stock, and all, of course, black and white--sepia, really--although the largest had been hand-tinted, which added to its half-dreamy, half-creepy air of unreality. William and his mother, dated on the back: 1879. Swaddled in clothes that were form-fitting yet revealed nothing about the bodies underneath; that showed no skin except faces and hands. She was sitting, tightly laced, swathed, coiffed, rings on her fingers, a watch pinned to her bosom, and little jewels too small to distinguish hanging from her earlobes. He stood just to the side and behind her, nearly embalmed in coat and vest and cravat; their hands clasped on Anne's shoulder. At their backs, a studio backdrop--a velvety drape pulled aside to reveal a painted bucolic landscape. Buffy stared, holding the photograph under the lamp. 

His _hair_. He had so much of it. And that face--the expression, sort of simpering ... the expression was unfamiliar to her. It wasn't Spike. It wasn't even the Hinchliffe she'd started to get to know on the island. 

This man was different. He looked pompous, and at the same time like he was afraid of something--something that the camera might do to him. Expose him? 

She searched the face--all the faces, of all the Williams in the photographs--there was even a dageurrotype of a butt-naked baby belly-down on a bearskin--but ... she didn't quite see who she was looking for. She didn't see Spike. 

Her throat closed up as she shuffled the photos back and forth. _Spike._ What was she supposed to do without him? What was she supposed to do, knowing he was out there somewhere, suffering and searching, when where he ought to be was right here? 

She was tired of getting along oh so competently on her own. Tired of love always failing, of pretending stoically that it wasn't all that important. Tired of that feeling she craved always being just beyond her arm's reach. 

Love was supposed to conquer all--that was what Spike had always believed, anyway, even when she'd kept telling him he was out of his mind to go on hoping for her, because she'd never give him _squat_. But love didn't have that kind of power. Not really. Sometimes love was the biggest wedge you could drive between yourself and the other person. 

He'd gone away because he loved her. 

Because he loved her, she would probably never see him again. 

The pictures were a cheat. She didn't like the young man in them, who seemed lost in his clothes, in his too-much too-curly hair and self-satisfied little spectacles. When he stood with his brothers and sisters she could see that he was the least of them, the one who wasn't going anywhere. Lionel said he was still living at home at thirty, after the others had long since gone out into the British Empire. He'd warned her, apologetically, that she'd find the diary full of excreble attempts at poetry. 

It was Spike she wanted, and she didn't care whether he was alive or not, she'd never expected him to be alive, what did it matter WHAT DID IT MATTER she wasn't going to cry again because that would bring Willow and anyway it was stupid--crying didn't change anything and knowing Lionel even though she already felt so close to him wasn't going to change anything and he'd left her, they always left her, they always left her stupid nasty men who made her love them and then didn't stay ... . 

She stuffed the things back into the envelope, and put it away in a drawer, before she took one of Willow's sleeping pills, and a long hot shower. She felt like the only person awake in London. 

The only person hurting anywhere. 

The only one who'd been left alone.  
  


* * *

 

 

Lionel had turned out his light and curled onto his side, but Clive was still sitting up, reading the book propped on his knees through the half-glasses on the end of his long nose. 

"Unusual girl." 

"I thought so." 

"Do you believe her?" 

Lionel had filled him in on Buffy's story as they got ready for bed. 

"I didn't at first. How could one? There are so many loonies about. But after hearing all she had to say, and show me too--that scooter! Up over her head! I do. As Sherlock Holmes always said, once you eliminate all the feasible explanations that don't fit the facts, the one that remains, however improbable, must be right." 

"Holmes always said that, did he, Li?" 

"I'm sure he did. Somewhere." 

"And now you've sent her off with all William's relics, do you think you'll ever see them again?" 

"I have no doubt. She's not a thief, that girl." 

"I hope not." 

"And she liked us. She spoke of friends, but they aren't quite in sympathy with her. She's lonely. Did you like her?" 

"For an American female, I suppose she wasn't too bad." 

"Not too bad! She's lovely. A breath of fresh air." Lionel paused. "He'll turn up, you know. I think we'll see him." 

"The so-called vampire? Now, Li--" 

"He won't leave her alone for long. She's too sweet a morsel to let fall. He'll come back for her." 

"So we really do believe in vampires now, do we?" Clive folded his glasses, laid them and the book on the bedside table, and snapped off the lamp. Spooning Lionel, he kissed his shoulder. 

"Hmmm. We're fools if we don't. You'll see." 

"Life's never been boring with you, darling." 

"I should say not."  
  


* * *

 

 

When she awoke it was nearly noon, and Willow was gone to work at the Council offices. Buffy's head ached. She poured some juice, then went back to her bedroom, fishing the envelope out from under the sweaters. Wondering why she'd hidden it so carefully the night before--as if from herself. 

The pictures looked different now. 

Weird how that worked. Last night she'd been so sure--angrily sure--that there was no one in them she knew. 

But now somehow ... if that wasn't the man she loved, there in that picture of three undergraduates, in straw boaters and shirtsleeves, lounging under a tree on a riverbank--then it was no one. Oh God. Spike had been a slight, rather pretty, rather timid-looking young man sucking on a blade of grass as he waited patiently for the picture to be made. His wrists were so slender! And those hands ... those sepia hands in the picture, one holding the stalk of long grass, the other curled around his knee ... she'd kissed those fingers, she'd thrilled to the way they touched her. 

Closing her eyes, she tried to project herself into that place, to see it as it really was, not in all those tones of brown, but alive and green, the water purling, the breeze moving the trees, birds twittering, and the three young men, chatting and laughing, she didn't know what they'd be chatting about, in 1870, but William would say clever things, his friends would listen when he talked, they liked him, respected his opinions ... . 

_When I want your opinion I'll ask ... no. Never mind that--Spike, I'll never want your opinion._ Giles had said that. It came back to her now like a gate slamming down. They'd never aknowledged his changes, never changed their minds about him, never thanked him for his help, never valued him, and ... maybe that was part of it, why Spike left her. He'd known the others wouldn't welcome him back. Those last weeks before he'd gone to his destruction, she'd been the only one who believed in him. None of the others were even curious about the soul, how he got it, why. Which, now she looked at it, was just damn strange. Here was the only vampire in known history to fight for his soul, and Giles of all people just wasn't interested. Granted they were in the midst of a big crisis, but he didn't even pay lip service to curiosity. He didn't want to know. He plotted to take Spike out of the game, out of the world. 

Spike had no reason to think they'd changed their attitudes. He must've feared they'd make _her_ change her mind about being with him. Because he knew her love wasn't strong enough. Knew she didn't really know how to love. Hell, she'd confessed as much to him, when she told him what her life was these last ten years. 

This was her fault, that's what it kept coming down to.  
  


* * *

 

 

She'd had every intention of leaving Lionel alone for a few days, so as not to seem too horribly eager and at loose ends. So she wasn't quite sure why her afternoon walk fetched her up, just as the sun was setting, on the narrow street in Mayfair where their old-fashioned bow-windowed shopfront projected a warm yellow glow on the pavement. 

_Hinchliffe & Thornycroft. Prints. Autographs. Folios._ Just like it said on the card he'd given her yesterday. 

She stood across the street and looked at the pale-blue-painted house. It was a house, probably 18th century--she'd learned, over the years in London, a little bit about how to distinguish--although the windows on the second floor were lit up brightly too, and she could see that the rooms were offices. In fact, she could see the top of Clive's head as he bent over some work. 

Inside the shop itself, framed prints were hung up to the ceiling, so close together that she couldn't see the walls at all. There were wooden racks and tables and chests of wide shallow drawers that held more, and in the back, behind a large elaborately carved old desk, Lionel was on the phone. 

He seemed different too, on this different day. In the cemetery, and in his house, he'd been friendly, a little silly, a sort of harmless eccentric. But from her current vantage he reminded her more of Giles--in his dark suit he looked serious and purposeful, intent on the task at hand. A man in charge of himself and his surroundings, with important things going on. 

She should walk by. 

She did walk by. 

At the corner, an open air flower stall beckoned, and the next thing she knew she'd bought a large bunch of--something festive--and was heading back with it. Keeping her eyes on the blooms, she got through the door. When it fell shut behind her, she felt as if she'd moved not just indoors from out, but through some other kind of portal. The atmosphere of the shop had nearly nothing to do with the twenty-first century. It was lit by electric light, and the desk held a small laptop computer and a telephone--on which Lionel was still talking, though she'd meant to wait for him to finish except nerves made her forgetful--but everything that was important inside was from long long ago. The prints--large and small, colored and monochrome--had an air of repose to them that almost nothing did anymore. They didn't jump out at you, they waited, in their calm atmospheres, to be observed. Buffy's eye bounced from one to the next, barely taking them in, so hard was her heart hammering--why?--Ancient Egyptian cityscapes here, detailed renderings of plants there, gatherings of men in kneebreeches and periwigs over there, architectural elevations on the other side. 

Lionel was still talking: " ... authenticity was never in doubt, but if Schlieffen wants to look at them before--won't be a moment, my dear, sit here on the edge of my desk, and swing your pretty legs, that'll pull the punters in off the street--well then he's perfectly welcome to do so, but they've got to be in Prague by the end of next week ... ." 

Lionel patted the corner of the desk, and she obediently hopped up. A moment later he put down the phone. "Delightful. With you perched there, I feel just like whatsisname in _His Girl Friday._ " 

"I brought these." Buffy thrust the bouquet at him. 

"So you did, and very sweet of you, too." 

"I'm not trying to be a pest." 

"Nor are you succeeding without trying. Mind the shop, would you, while I run up and put these in water? If the phone rings, just answer Hinchliffe & Thornycroft, and then say 'hold please,' and hum a tune at them until I come back." 

Left alone amidst the wooden racks and cases, the smell of old paper mingling in the air with a richer scent from a few small china bowls holding potpourri that were dispersed about the room, Buffy wondered how it was that a girl like her should end up spending so much of her time amongst books and papers and things that were old and ought to be dead. Wasn't she a girl of the Golden West, made for sunlight and newness and forward-looking? 

That's what she'd thought, back when ... oh, twenty years ago. She wasn't sure right now what she was supposed to be looking forward to. Some sort of work. That was supposed to be what was good for the soul. 

Maybe she could work here. Answering the phone, humming little tunes. Filing things. In the wrong places. Making the tea. Badly. Flashing her legs at the clients. 

Maybe Lionel would offer that when he came back, and maybe he'd ask her to live with them too--that would be nice. If she lived with them, she wouldn't have to pretend, like she did with Willow. She could live in William's house, and put her hair up in a bun to come to work every day, and eventually she'd inherit the house and the business, and it would say on the window _Hinchliffe & Thornycroft. B. Summers, Proprietress_, and by then she'd know all about prints and folios and autographs, and she'd wear tweed and support hose and be very shrewd. 

"These are perfectly delicious. Camellias are Clive's favorite. So thoughtful of you." 

"The phone didn't ring." 

"So thoughtful of it. We're closing in ten minutes, and then we'll pop round the corner for a drink. That's what Clive and I usually do, so you'll join us." 

"I'm sorry." 

Lionel glanced up from where he was positioning the vase just so on top of one of the wooden chests. 

"You're sorry? Whatever for?" 

"You're probably thinking I'm ... I'm ... going to hang onto you like a _limpet_." She wasn't aware of knowing that word, and it made a little bubble of laughter fly out in its wake, which confused Lionel. 

"My dear." He came and stood before her, his hands on her shoulders. "These are such extraordinary circumstances ... you mustn't worry. Everything will be all right. You did the right thing, calling round. I do like spontaneity in my friends." 

"Are we friends?" 

"Tremendous friends. Or will be, as we go along. And of course you'll be my old auntie one of these days soon as well, which will be a startling and invigorating turn of events." 

"Oh! But ... ." 

"He'll come back. We'll _make_ him come back." 

"How?" 

"Why--by desiring him to do so so very very intently!" 

Her heart was in her throat. "And if he doesn't?" 

"Then we'll find ways to console one another. Now I hear Clive on the stairs, which means it's time for shutting up in here. Next stop, The Badgered Butler."  
  
  
  
After pre-prandial drinks at the Badgered Butler, a stately protein-rich dinner with wine--and trifle!--at Simpson's such as Buffy had almost never had in her life, and more drinks in a small smoky basement club where a rackety three-piece jazz band played and Buffy thought she was the only woman there, although in some cases it was difficult to tell for certain, her outlook was much improved. Everything she looked at had a warm golden halo around it, including her memories; Lionel and Clive were the fathers and uncles and big brothers she'd never had and always yearned for; everything was hilarious, and she felt warm, secure, and right. 

Hours later she left them, giggling, each with a red lipstick kiss on his cheek, and stumbled a little getting up the stairs to the flat. 

Willow was watching the late movie on television. "Hey Buff. Where've ya been?" 

"Out eating my weight in roast beef with my new gay nephews." 

"Oh--good! That's good." 

"I am so totally sloshed. And now I'm going to fall over." 

"Okay. Ohhhh--Lemme help you!" 

"That ... is quite, quite unnecessary, my dear Auntie," Buffy said, in what she was sure was an excellent imitation of Lionel. Then she laughed and laughed and let Willow guide her off to bed.  
  


* * *

 

 

Late at night, for three nights, she read William's diary in bed. Spike had chided her for not knowing, or wanting to know, anything about him. Well, she'd make good on that. She was determined to read it all--there was quite a lot, almost five years' worth in the one book. 

But _God_ , long stretches of it were boring. After a while she didn't even try to read the neatly copied poems; just let her eyes scooch right by them in embarrassment. The entries were so samey: this that and the other charming young lady met at this that and the other evening party ... nothing ever coming of these introductions ... outings with his mother and his sisters, Daphne and Phoebe, to Kew Gardens or Greenwich by boat; reportage on the marriages of those sisters to uninteresting young men with prospects in the eastern reaches of the Empire (it was William who called them uninteresting, and described them no further), summaries of plays and concerts and picture exhibitions attended, food eaten and tailors visited and weather walked through and sermons heard. Once in a while there'd be some little shimmer of something almost Spike-like: 

> _Why does nobody in society ever say what he really means? Because the whole empty ediface would come tumbling down on their curled and gleaming pates if anybody did! I should like to!_

It just made her Spike seem more elusive. 

In the last months, there was a girl whose name came up over and over. Cecily Addams. CA CA CA, the initials stood out from William's neat script on every page Buffy flipped. Miss Addams was adorable, she was sensitive and angelic and pure and sweet-natured, she said clever things in company, wore her clothes beautifully, had a regal carriage and lips like cherries, and on and on. The pages devoted to tortured rhyme were more and more frequent. But nowhere did she find any mention of a real conversation with Cecily, let alone anything so bold-faced as a declaration of this passion. 

William was afraid. Afraid even of that. 

"Thank you for these," she said, returning the envelope to Lionel. 

"Did you have the things copied?" 

". . . no. They're ... they're not him. Well, there's one picture, that's sort of like ...." She spilled the envelope out, found the one, the three young men in shirtsleeves on the river bank. "There's something in this one that's kind of dear ... but you have to understand, he isn't like these. Spike's different." 

"I should expect so." Lionel looked at the picture, then put it back in her hand. "But you keep this one, if it gives you any pleasure at all." 

" _Really_ different," Buffy said, the gift barely registering on her. "Spike could be brutal, merciless ... I still have trouble reconciling that part. He was a killer. But he gave it up for me, because he fell in love with me. The chip helped, but I swear it wasn't the chip alone that changed him. He gave it up for love of me--got his soul for love of me, so he would never hurt me again. He was constant. He was faithful. I couldn't love him, not until the end, and even then he thought I didn't, but that didn't deter him." 

"And you saw nothing of that in William's writings? It seems to me that his whole self was built on affection, especially for the ladies in his life--his mother, his sisters, and the Miss Addams whom he writes so much about--" 

Buffy silenced him with an adamant head-shake. "If he remained like this, if he was never turned ... he'd just have been some shnook. A weakling, a nobody. Instead, he became ... he was a man capable of this enormous self-sacrifice. He died so I didn't have to--so the world could go on without him. And ... he really loved being in the world." She smiled. "He liked soap operas and old movies, rock'n'roll, playing poker. He was a Man United supporter. He relished a good fight. He liked books, although he tried to keep that secret. He didn't want any of us to know he'd ever been upper class, or educated, but there were books--good ones--squirreled away all over his crypt--I saw them. He liked food, too, even though vampires as a rule don't consume anything but blood. He liked a joke, and he could tell some good ones, when anybody'd bother to listen. He loved ... he loved making love. He was very very good at it, very ... intuitive. He loved women, their bodies, their pleasure. But he was a faithful lover. Drusilla--I've nothing nice to say about her, but Spike was devoted to her. Tenderly devoted, I saw that too--he stayed with her for more than a hundred years. She left him, or else they'd be together still. He always stuck by me, even though I gave him nothing. He always wanted to communicate with me, when all I had for him was silence, or a punch in the face. He was bold that way." She glanced at the pictures, letters, and the diary again, spilled across the polished surface of the table. "The man I love isn't in these things. He wasn't born yet. The man I love ... he couldn't come into being without first being a demon." 

Lionel looked uneasy; she saw him try to conceal it with a smile. "How does that make you feel?" 

"I don't know. Except that ... all these years I've learned ... your allies can come trailing all kinds of strange baggage, but ... they're still your allies. You find out whom you can trust. Rely on. Who's true." 

_Who's true. I know Spike is, but he doesn't know that about me._

She looked up at Lionel. His eyes were the same blue as Spike's. "When I found him on the island, I tried to show him that I understood him, that I felt for him the way he always wanted me to. I told him over and over--but he was troubled about coming back, about the mystery of it. And then when we had to leave there, and he was a vampire again--he just couldn't hear me. Or else I kept saying it wrong. I ... I'm sure I said it wrong. If I hadn't, he wouldn't have left me." 

"I'm sure you didn't." 

"No. Really. You don't know me, yet. You don't know what I'm like." 

"I think you're a darling. I see what William sees." 

Buffy's cheeks were hot. "Lionel--I wish you could meet him. He's--there's just nobody like him. Nobody at all. And if ... if I never see him again ... I don't know what I'll do!"  
  


* * *

 

 

"What do you think?" Huddled into a corner of the cramped booth, Buffy held the elaborate long white dress up in front of her. The satin was yellowed in places.

"Mmm," Willow said, glancing away from a pile of vintage silk scarves. Visits to these Sunday flea markets always seemed like such a good idea when Buffy proposed them, but she got bored after a half hour of fighting the crowds and keeping her hand on her wallet, just to see rack after rack of second-hand dresses, booths full of tatty DVDs, strange furniture, ugly knickknacks. She didn't like the stink of chip fat and Pad Thai and the bad rock'n'roll blasting from the PA. And there was never anything for her--nothing truly mystical or magical, nothing with any power. Just a lot of tat. She preferred shopping at Selfridge's. "Old. Pretty. But where would you wear a vintage wedding gown?"

"I'm not going to buy it. It's two hundred pounds! It's just ... it's a really romantic dress. I mean--this stiff embroidery, and these seed pearls, there's thousands of them and they must've been put on by hand."

"Really romantic, that kind of work. The women who did it were paid pennies a day and probably went blind."

"Way to harsh my mellow," Buffy grumbled, replacing the gown on the rack. 

"I'm not trying to harsh you. No harsh," Willow said. The sight of Buffy with that wedding gown filled her with a sadness that seemed all out of proportion to the occasion. Who was to say Buffy wouldn't meet someone soon and get married in due time? She was only thirty-three. Well, about to be thirty-four, but that was still all kinds of young. "Let's go somewhere and eat cake."

When they were seated at a café a few streets away, Willow said, "So ... that _was_ a nice gown. Very ... very feminine."

Buffy stirred lump after lump of sugar into her coffee with an abstracted air. " I always used to think I'd wear Mom's dress when the time came. She was keeping it for me. Us. For Dawn too, I guess." She added another lump. "That was before I became the slayer. After that, I stopped thinking about getting married so much. I mean, I used to fantasize about marrying Angel, but I always knew, deep down, that wasn't going to be possible. Even without ... without what actually happened with us."

How was she going to drink that sugary mess, Willow wondered. She said, "I try not to dwell on that stuff. What was in the attic and all that. All the Rosenberg and Steinhart family memorabilia I lost. My childhood home. I'm just grateful my parents got out of Sunnydale beforehand."

"Yeah," Buffy said. "Sometimes I'm glad Mom didn't live to see what happened to it."

"Re-really?"

"Kind of. It would've made her too sad. She lost so much, you know?"

"But not you. Not you and Dawn. What else would've mattered to her? Oh Buffy, I didn't know you felt that way."

She shrugged. "It might've been hard for her, seeing me ... seeing the way things turned out for me."

"What do you mean, 'turned out'? They're still turning! Our lives are in full swing! She'd be incredibly proud of all you've accomplished, all your travel, and--"

"Yeah, no, sure," Buffy murmured. She smiled suddenly, like the sun emerging from clouds. The temperature in the cafe seemed to go up a couple of notches. "Life does go on, doesn't it? And things aren't so bad." She was still stirring, but hadn't tasted the coffee.

Willow leaned forward. "Buffy, what happened to you? What happened to the boat? Did you sell it? Give it away?"

"Oh, the boat was destroyed. Everything was destroyed."

"Destroyed--? What are you talking about?"

"The island. Where I phoned you from that time. It was just this obscure little volcano. Well, it erupted. Completely unanticipated. The whole thing sank into the ocean like it never was, and my little boat got sucked down with it."

"My God. _Buffy_. How did you get away?"

"There was a freighter that took most of the people off when the eruption started."

Willow was almost inclined to disbelieve her. Buffy seemed so detached, imparting this information as if it had happened long ago, and to someone else. "And that guy? The one you called me about, who reminded you of Spike?"

"Oh, he made it to the freighter too."

Buffy stopped stirring, and placed the spoon very carefully into the saucer. "Did you ... Will, you never told Giles about that, did you?" 

"No. You asked me not to." 

"Good. Giles helped set Spike up so Robin could kill him, you know. Even though he knew I needed him for the final fight, he totally plotted against us, because he didn't want him to be in my life at all. I don't think Giles ever really appreciated what Spike did for us. In all these years, I've never heard him say a word about it. Of course, I've never heard any of you say anything about his sacrifice. He gave himself to us in those last months, fought our battles, and no one was even a little bit kind to him." 

"Uh ... well, we don't talk about that time very much, do we?" 

Buffy picked up the spoon again, looked at her tiny reflection in the curved bowl-back. 

"So, the guy made it off the island too--and then what?" 

Buffy glanced up. " _Jeez_ Willow, what do you think? You _said_ he wasn't Spike." 

"Sure, I just wondered ...." 

"I just hope it's the last time I have to watch a place sink into nothing. I really have had enough of that kind of thing."

"God, yes! I'm so sorry that happened to you. It seems, just ... incredible ... ."

"It was time to come home," Buffy said, flashing that dazzling smile again, and touching Willow's arm in a way that made her shiver. Buffy's skin was so warm, as if she was running a low fever. "When things get tough, it's time to go back to the people who knew you when."  
  


* * *

 

 

"There's a good chance they'll kill you."

"Yeah."

"And even if the Trial doesn't, there's an equally good chance they'll trick you. They tricked me."

"Yeah?" This he wanted to hear. Angel getting done out of anything was always good news.

"There was fine print. Except, nothing was actually printed. I went through the ordeal, I survived, I was granted my request. I asked for Darla's life, and that's when they told me she'd already been brought back once. And that was that. She was sick and there was no cure."

"Huh."

He stared down into the empty swimming pool, so he didn't have to look at Angel. Who was standing just behind him in his black Prada suit, talking into the cool night air, obviously not too keen to look at him either. Ever since he'd presented himself at the offices of Wolfram & Hart, Angel had been cool, but not hostile, exuding an air of superior fairness with every restrained remark and gesture. 

He'd already known Spike was back in the world, although he didn't say how. 

Neither of them brought up Buffy. 

In the chauffeur-driven limo on the way over, Angel poured bloody marys--type AB negative--from a silver flask into heavy Swedish crystal glasses. He never really looked at Spike there either, made no effort at small talk. They drank and stared at the back of the driver's head.

"You've been brought back once, Spike. I expect they'll take the same line with you. But if you want to go for this, hell, what do I care? Knock yourself out."

The floor of the empty pool was strewn with dead leaves. They stirred in the breeze; it was possible to imagine, if you were imaginative, that there was a message in the pattern of their movements.

"You ever try for this for yourself? Getting your life back?"

"It isn't possible."

"All this power you've got now--can't be anything you can't arrange. Or don't you want it?"

"Sure I want it," Angel said, his voice flat and cool. "I'm telling you, boy, it's not something we vampires can pick up for the asking, not by fighting, not by force. Not by desire. You had your shot at it, Jaysus knows how or why, and you lost it again. Not your fault, as I understand. It's a misfortune, sure. Still, you have the memories."

Spike noticed the old country lilt creeping into Angel's speech. Curious. He never used to get maudlin and Irish. "But have you ever tried? Ever gone out questin' for it, like I've been? Made a single-minded search for the one place where the power lies? One thing I've learned about this bleedin' world, there's nothing you can't have if you're willing to pay."

"You didn't learn that from me, boy." Angel's tone, despite the words, was even, nonconfrontational. "I know all about your quest. Whole mystical underworld's been buzzing with it--you've torn off enough powerful heads doing it, there's nobody who doesn't know about the vampire who wants his beating heart back. You're not going to get it." 

"I still don't know that." 

"Been chasing it everywhere, but you haven't found it, have you?" Angel said, his tone a mixture of mockery and admiration. "You look like shit , you've made a whole posse of new enemies, and you've found squat. So at last you've come to me. Because there's nowhere else for you to go."

Spike gritted his teeth. Angel was right of course, but he didn't have to like it. 

"Say they've got the power down there to restore your humanity." Angel gestured at the pool. "What is it that you're going to pay with, Spike? A beating heart's got to come pretty dear."

"I'll fight for it. It's how I got my soul."

"A soul isn't a life. Souls're infinite--makes 'em cheap, in a way. While a life--each one's finite--and unique. Nothing's rarer than one individual life. When I did the Trial, I was going to trade my existence for Darla's life. What could you possibly trade for your own honest mortality? Except what you can't afford to lose. Remember, they're tricksters, the Powers."

He didn't want to hear this, but he understood what Angel wasn't saying. Even if he won his life, they'd take away what he wanted it _for._ Buffy would be put forever out of his reach. Maybe even killed. It would be the bloody _Gift of the Magi_ on a grand scale. 

He'd known that, in the back of his mind, all this time, even as he went swaggering around making himself a big item on the demon grapevine. But how could he not _try_? Trying for it at least gave him time. Once all the avenues of inquiry were truly exhausted, there'd be nothing left to do but shit or-- 

"Tricksters, yeah, got that. So why'd they give me a life at all? I was more than ten years on that island, knowing nothing about who I really am."

"Who knows? One of the Powers was in a good mood when you snuffed it. It was a little cosmic joke. And the way it went down, your time in that place was up, whether she happened upon you or not."

This, indeed, seemed true. Had Buffy not been there to throw him that broomstick, chances were better than good that Dru would have turned him once more, and he'd have been _really_ back at square one. Not just hungry and tormented, but soulless and damned again too. 

"No reason for you to be anything other than you are, Spike." Angel shifted, the gravel crunching a little under the thin soles of his Italian shoes. "Why can't you just be glad you're still around to watch the show? Finding out what happens next ... that's what gets us demons through the days, isn't it?"

"Used to do. Not so simple anymore. I love a woman who needs a real live man."

Silence. Spike felt Angel's looming bulk just behind his right shoulder. His absolute stillness. No breath, no movement. Just the weight of his sire's antipathy and his stolid determination to be fair.

He whispered, "I can't live without her, but I have to be alive for her. She wanted to be my wife. I was going to work for us, an' for the little ones that would come, an' I was going to be her man. That's what she said she wanted." 

"Did she?" Angel's voice was hollow in the stillness between gusts of breeze. _How he must hate this,_ Spike thought. _Hate me._

Angel's hand curled around his arm, yanked him back from the pool's edge. "Don't be a fool. You'll only lose more in the Trial than you've lost already. The manly thing to do is to protect her from the stupid repercussions of you going down there." 

Spike glanced around at him. 

"If she loves you, if she's told you so ... then all you need to be for her is there." 

He couldn't imagine why Angel was being this way. Maybe he'd evolved so far that he really did just want Buffy to have whatever she thought she wanted. Spike let himself be drawn away from the pool's edge, back to the limo waiting with its engine running, door open. 

He got in; Angel followed. 

They rode in silence for a few minutes, then Angel shifted in his seat.

"You care, don't you, about the Mission." 

"Capital 'M' one, you mean? Yeah. Not sure you do, though." 

"I do. Of course I do." Angel paused. "It's ... complex." 

"Oh, I'll bet." 

"Go back to her, Spike. Make her happy." 

"Dunno if I even _can_ \--" 

Angel made a donnish gesture. "I've come to believe ... for those who are capable of it ... being happy's a moral obligation." 

Spike blinked. Didn't know which was stranger, the message or the messenger. 

" ... sucks to be you." 

"I'll fly you there."  
  


* * *

 

 

After she told about the boat and the island, Willow didn't bring it up again. She was grateful for her silence on the subject.

Spike was silent too, but she hadn't expected anything different. What message would he send her, unless to say he was coming back? And he wasn't coming. 

She hoped he wasn't punishing himself, wasn't suffering. Like that summer in the school basement, when he'd been so lost and alone and terrified. Remembering how she'd discovered him there and how long she'd _left_ him there, languishing, made her cringe now. Why? She should've gone back as soon as Dawn was safe, gotten him out of there, brought him home. Not to Xander's, but to her house. Should've talked to him. 

She thought about it every day, ever hour. Whether she was with her new friends Lionel and Clive, or with her old ones, or alone. If she'd been capable of the right kind of love, and enough of it, Spike would've believed in it, in her, and himself. Leaving would never have occurred to him. 

That idea gave her a string of bad nights. 

Then one morning she woke up with a new feeling, a better one. The world around her seemed brighter, lighter. Suddenly the people in her life seemed more interesting, gentler and nearer to her. She couldn't spend an afternoon in Olivia's kitchen, with the Aga making everything cozy, the children running in and out, and not find access to contentment. She couldn't take long walks with Willow, wandering out to parts of London neither of them had ever seen before, and not be aware of how friendship--solid, matter-of-fact friendship--could knit you up inside. Lionel and Clive treated her like an adored niece, took pleasure in squiring their new "Auntie" to the theatre, to picture galleries and Hampton Court and on drives out of London where they lunched at cozy country pubs, and she beat them handily at darts. 

Life unfolded, and Buffy understood there were other kinds of love that she could have. Could make. Could keep. 

The fog inside her lifted. She felt energetic and clear. Slept well at night, remembered no dreams. In the day, she noticed things, like the tight hard green buds of the trees before they opened into tiny tender leaves, or the refreshing grey-blue wash of the sky over Hampstead Heath when she strolled there in the late afternoon. The air took on a tinge of renewal. Every day she took a yoga class, and stood on her head afterwards for a half hour, feeling hopeful and serene. She showed up to spar with the student slayers, and finished these workouts grinning, glistening with sweat that felt clean and pure. Everywhere she went, people smiled indulgently at her. Each day was a good hair day. She was hungry all the time, so she ate: piles of hot buttered toast in the morning, jacket potatoes with cheese and scallions, lamb chops and asparagus. She learned to make English desserts: bread and butter pudding, treacle tart. She got up a dinner party for Giles and Olivia, Dawn and Willow, Andrew and Frankie, cooking a four course meal herself. She hadn't made such a big elaborate dinner since that Thanksgiving back in Sunnydale with the Indian massacre. 

She still wanted Spike, still thought of him all day, and in her bed at night. 

But she no longer felt so all alone.

  
  


* * *

 

 

"Ohhh ... I'm not going to drink that. Could I have some water instead?" 

"No champers? But we brought this up from the cellar just for you!" 

"I've been drinking too much. I didn't realize." 

"Didn't realize--?" 

Buffy smiled. "How much I'd been drinking. You guys are terrible! Every time we're together, you ply me with intoxicating liquors, and--" 

"We _don't_ have our ways with you." 

"But you do. Except your ways are to beat me at Scrabble and make me dance dances I don't know how to dance. Anyhow, I can't anymore." 

"I hope this isn't one of those tiresome self-denial regimens Americans always go in for. You're not going to expect Clive and me to leave off drinking as well, are you, Auntie?" 

"No, just me. And I should've stopped a while ago, but ... I wasn't aware of it. I wasn't attuned." 

Lionel tilted his head in what she'd already come to think of as the Hinchliffe manner. "Attuned?" 

"Why don't you call Clive in here so I can tell you both at once."  
  


* * *

 

 

London astonished him. 

He'd never mentioned it to Buffy, but he hadn't returned here since before the Great War. Not at first for any reason except that he went where Angelus went, but once Angelus was gone and he was free to go where he liked with Dru, he'd never wanted to come back to the place where he'd been feebly mortal, lonely and unhappy and terribly mistaken about his mother. 

Of course he'd seen pictures and films of London--many many films--over the years. But no image could prepare him for the reality of the city that he still pictured to himself as gaslit and horse-drawn. 

He paced the room. Had chosen this hotel because he remembered it from the old days, with Angelus. In the Nineties it was a grand, gentlemanly place, redolent of cognac and cigars; now it was shabby and forgotten, running on fumes. Plenty of them: the flocked wallpaper, heavy draperies and carpets stank, to his heightened senses, of decades of tobacco, sweat, sex, sickness, perfume, passion and grief. 

Cautiously he put the curtain aside to gaze across at the Square. The trees were in their first bloom, the leaves pale and tender in the soft noon light, under a washed out sky without clouds. He longed to walk out there, with the strollers, the running children and dogs, feel the sun on his face, be a Londoner like all the others again. All kinds of things he'd barely thought of since his turning came back to him with a nearly unbearable nostalgic longing: walking to church with Mother on still grey winter Sundays through streets so nearly empty of traffic that the hoofbeats of what horses there were echoed off the shuttered buildings; shepherding Phoebe and Daphne through the skylit rooms of the National Gallery, listening indulgently to their silly prattle about the pictures, or taking them and Mother on the Thames boat to Kew on a summer afternoon, the river gleaming in the strong light, their dear faces in the pink shade of their parasols brighter in memory than the organized tiers of flowers they went to meet. He'd missed none of that in his twelve undead decades. Now he could think of almost nothing else but those sunlit Victorian times when he'd been young, living at the center of a family of women who couldn't do enough for him, before the girls married and were taken off into the Empire by their husbands, before Mother fell ill. 

Like most young men, he hadn't fully appreciated what he'd had while he had it. 

He didn't doubt anymore that she thought she loved him. He'd known it even back then, before his death--the flame of her regard--small, it was, but perfectly formed. Absolutely pure. So little could come of it, in that time that wasn't for romance, for thought of the future. Still, she'd given him more than he'd ever dared hope for. She'd been his friend. The only one _Spike_ had ever known. 

Meeting again in that wildly improbable way, of course her love revived--revived with all the intensity and hope that _was_ Buffy. He was human. A woman could want to love a man. He could see she was ready enough for that, marriage, children. But he wasn't even that poor man now. 

It was all very well for Angel to tell him to go to her, make her happy. But what sort of existence could they have together? She wasn't The Slayer anymore, the one girl in all the world, who might conceivably welcome the ongoing aid of an undead partner who would always have her back. That's what he'd fantasized about in the old days--being The Boyfriend, Scooby #1. But Sunnydale was gone, the world was chockful of slayers, and Buffy was out of that routine. How could they live together, day by day? She moving on towards mid-life, he captured in amber, unaging?  
  


* * *

 

 

Giles hung up the phone and glanced up. 

"Buffy!" 

She was peeking around his office doorway. When he said her name, she flashed a nervous smile. "Hi, Giles." 

"I didn't expect you. Was I supposed to expect you? My secretary is out with flu--" 

"No, I was just ... wandering by." 

"Well, I'm so glad you did. It's been a while, hasn't it? I won't offer you tea, caffeine not good for the baby, is it? There may be some juice in the fridge downstairs--" 

She sat in one of the leather guest chairs. Still nervous, and very-- _groomed_ \--as if she'd come to apply for a position. Hair pulled back, full make-up. Dressed very primly in a dark blouse and skirt. No tummy, but it was soon for that, yet. 

"I'm good. Not thirsty." 

When she'd told him--really, when Willow told him and she corroborated it--that Buffy had fallen pregnant during her long voyage and had decided to be a single mother, his first thought was that her life was again skittering out of control. Nothing in the dozen years since Sunnydale had seemed to go entirely right with her. She'd done good work, but he could see she was always restless, never really happy. Her attempts at relationships always seemed to be just that--attempts. Nothing took. And now she was thirty-three, and going to plunge into motherhood without forethought or real intention. Nothing in that dozen years or anything prior to it gave him a sense that she'd ever wanted to have a child, at least not that way. He'd imagined she made this choice out of obligation. 

But once the news was imparted, he saw a change in her. She'd lightened, and at the same time seemed solid in a way he couldn't remember seeing her since California. And serene in a way he'd _never_ seen. 

Her life was underway again, and though it seemed to be in a direction that was pulling her away from her old associates and the slayer agenda--she had new friends she barely spoke about and wouldn't bring around--Giles could only feel glad. She was entitled to a well-rounded life, after all, and the decision to have the child without a partner spoke of an optimism she didn't have before. 

He smiled his most disarming smile. "Everything all right? You feeling well?" 

"Yes, I'm fine. Everything's fine." 

"Excellent. Well ... what can I do for you this lovely morning?" 

"I'm here with an invitation." She took a little cream-colored envelope from her purse and held it out to him. 

Giles took it, adjusting his glasses. Inside was a slip of heavy ragged note paper, with a name and address in Kensington printed at the top. 

> _Compliments to Mr and Mrs Giles, whom we'd be most happy to see for dinner on 4th April at 8:00. Don't dress._

"A nude dinner party?" 

"Huh?" Buffy snatched the note back. " _No._ He means, don't wear evening clothes. Um ... Li and Clive have a lot of evening-clothesy dinner parties, but this won't be." Amidst her apprehension, his mild attempt at humor escaped her altogether. 

"Li and Clive. These are your new friends I've heard so little about?" 

She smiled then, a canary-swallowing smile. It wasn't what Giles expected--not that Buffy wouldn't befriend a gay couple, but he'd been so sure there was a new lover for her in it somewhere. 

Some sort of threesome going on perhaps? She was so full of mysteries. 

But ... no. A man with this kind of notepaper wouldn't be doing something like that. Giles could imagine what he'd be like, and ... and he couldn't imagine what that sort of man would want with Buffy at all, or she with him. Curioser and curioser. "I'll have to check with Olivia of course, but I know we've nothing in particular on Saturday night. As long as we can get a sitter, there should be no problem." 

"Oh, _good._ Willow's coming too, and Dawn." 

"Indeed?" 

"I thought--we thought--it was time to bring everyone together." 

_We?_ Giles wanted to ask questions, but he doubted he'd get much out of her, Buffy never being big with the exposition. So, they'd just have to go along and see.  
  


* * *

 

 

He'd been here three nights. Every evening at dusk he set out from the hotel, but did nothing more than wander around the West End, marveling at the changes and at all that remained the same. He took himself to familiar places: his old club was still there. His favorite coffee house on High Holborn, near the Inns of Court where he'd been articled, was long gone, but the Inns themselves still stood. He couldn't see them; the gardens were barred at night, twenty-first century security reasons. The theaters--Drury Lane, the Cri. The opera house at Covent Garden, where Bart always took a box for the season. The various houses he'd visited as a young man were hit or miss--he found some, others were obviously casualties of the war or other species of urban renewal, replaced by high-rise assaults on taste. How strange to stand in front of the door of the last place he'd visited alive--the house where Cecily had slashed his heart. It had barely changed; well-kept, door painted a shiny red, same brasses gleaming, almost the same damask draperies shading the windows. Every single person who'd been at that party long dead, and yet here was the house with its same patrician countenance, and here was he.

He turned away, walked a while, directionless, the loneliness closing in. Other demons could smell the soul on him, a stink that set him apart as the chip never had. The people thronging the streets were so many jam jars he mustn't touch lest wrath rain down on his head. 

Nowhere he belonged. No place that was right for him. 

A familiar odor on the breeze jerked him to a stop. Spike glanced up; he stood in front of an unremarkable house, one of a long unbroken row of grey-faced three-storied houses in Gower Street, long since converted into offices or small hotels. This one was the headquarters of some organization that announced itself only with a very discreet brass plate by the bell-pull. 

He knew, by the scent-- _eau de Sunnydale_ \--what organization it was. 

It was getting late; cars and busses still filled the street, but the passersby were few. He stood with eyes fixed on that impassive door. 

Which opened suddenly. 

A man half in, half out, still speaking, in a voice he knew, to someone within. "Leave it 'til morning. That grimoire isn't going to be any rarer then than it is now. Anyway, I'm off home." He shut the door and started forward. 

"Off home. Lovely words, those." 

Giles started at being addressed so suddenly by someone standing so close to him. He didn't look at Spike. It took a moment for him to twig to it: Watcher thought he was a homeless begger about to put the touch on him. 

Sod it if he wasn't, though. 

"Wife an' kiddies an' all that's comfortable, right, mate?" 

Giles was moving off at a rapid clip on his long legs, but it was nothing to Spike to keep up. 

"Love 'em better'n you love yourself, yeah? Nothing you wouldn't do for 'em. No sacrifice too great. Would die an' all. Even if they turned their backs on you at the last." 

That stopped him. He spun around, a finger in Spike's chest. "Look you, I'll thank you to-- Oh dear Lord." 

"No, just old Spike. An' you've never thanked me for a thing, I suspect." 

The expression on Giles' face was worth any amount of money. Astonishment that shaded quickly--so quickly--into suspicion. Showed him right off where they stood. 

"You ... but you were destroyed. Everything there was destroyed. How can this be?" 

Some things never changed. Not so much as a how d'you do for the resurrected hero. His vision darkened, the backs of his eyes burning. Giles didn't know. Which meant Buffy hadn't told him. Which meant Buffy was still ... ashamed of him. Glad to be shed of him. Least said, soonest forgotten. 

"There's no rest for the wicked, they say." Spike threw his head back and sneered, flashing a bit of the golden eye. 

Giles looked aghast, which pleased him. Always was an arrogant wanker. "What do you want?" 

He unleashed the full game-face, breathed a growl out into the space between them. "What do I ever want? You know me, Rupes, none better. Packet of fags, pint of bitter, good punch-up, an' a low-down dirty kill." 

Giles shuddered, stepped back. "So you're what you were before." 

"Big Bad, yeah. What else would I be?" 

Suddenly his shirt front was twisted in the watcher's fist. Giles spat his words into Spike's face. "I don't know how you've come back from whatever hell you fell into, but by all that's holy if you so much as come near any of them, you won't know another sunset. I'll see to it." 

"Like you saw to Robin Wood takin' me out?" Spike lifted a hand, and Giles was staggering hard into the wrought iron palings. "Gettin' on a bit, Grandad. Easier'n' ever to knock off your pins. Whereas I'm--like you say--same as I ever was." 

"Buffy isn't." Giles straightened up, tugging at his clothes. "She's got a full rich life now, and no more need--in any way--of the likes of you." 

"She tell you that, did she?" 

"Why on earth should she? You're dead. She doesn't dwell on what's dead and gone. None of us do." 

And this was the man Buffy was so sure would welcome him as a fellow labourer in the struggle against Supernatural Evil. 

All at once he lost interest in baiting Giles. What was the point? What was the point of anything? Undead as he was, Giles would never speak to him like a man to another man, nor usher him through the door of the new Watcher's Council offices as a colleague. He'd never be able to function as a man in the world of men, never be Buffy's husband. He was apart. 

"Right you are, Rupes." He turned on his heel and started off the way he'd come. "That's me--dead an' gone. Body an' soul."  
  


* * *

 

 

Having hugged all three of his darlings, and placed a couple of key phone calls, and with the littler boy clasped on his knee, his second scotch in the other hand, Giles calmed. No need to alarm Buffy with this. Spike could have no way of knowing where she lived. They were all ex-directory. Even if he figured it out, Willow said she spent most of her time with these new friends, lots of overnights. So she was somewhere in London, could be anywhere; Spike would never begin to come across her. Certainly not in the little time remaining to him for the search. 

How _could_ Spike be returned to existence, and without the supposed soul? There was no way this wasn't a bad sign. Possibly presaging the coming of some new apocalyptic threat. 

None of the seers in the Council's network had gotten in touch. He'd contact them. It was time to be pro-active. If something new was rising, they'd have to start learning about it now.  
  


* * *

 

 

After that debacle with the old watcher, there was really no point seeking Buffy out. She'd certainly want to stake him for growling at her old man. Spike decided that he would leave London the next evening, and go ... go somewhere. Back to the hell Giles assumed he'd crawled out of, or perhaps back to Angel, nearly the same thing. 

But tonight, there was one more station to his London progress. He couldn't go from the city of his birth without seeing it again. 

No smoking on the Tube. That was a damn inconvenience. The car was packed; it was after midnight, and this might be the last train on the line. Half the riders were drunken young people; they made him hungry. The demon, already summoned up once that evening for no purpose, tormented him now with cravings for boozy blood supped from plump reddish necks. He slumped in the seat, staring up at the car cards as the train racketed on from stop to stop: Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square, Charing Cross, change at Embankment, Westminster, Victoria, South Kensington, Gloucester Road, and here he was: Kensington High Street. 

All this was after his time. Wending his way up to the surface, he found himself on a wide avenue of shuttered shops, and nothing he recognized. Which way was Walsingham Crescent? The other passengers were already melting away; besides, he had no stomach for asking directions. He set off to the left, but after traversing a few cross-streets, found himself no more oriented than before. Had they changed the bleeding names? He retraced his steps. A transit worker was drawing to the gates on the Tube entrance; Spike was going to ask when he stepped aside for two last exiters. A loving couple: tall, good-looking middle-aged bloke in a bespoke suit with his arm around a younger woman, his trenchcoat flapping around her tiny frame, trailing the pavement as she shambled tipsily on high heels. The man nodded to the worker as they stepped through the half-shut gate. 

"Good night," the girl sang out. 

_Bloody hell._ She hadn't wasted any time, had she? 

Seething, Spike tailed them, keeping well back as they clopped along up the High Street. 

". . . such a good play. _Such_ a good play. Thank you for taking me. Where's Shakespeare been all my life?" 

"Just waiting for you to come and pick him up." 

Shakespeare wasn't all she'd picked up. Christ, how could she? How could she after promising she'd be waiting for him? What did Slayer's promise mean, if she'd abandon it so bloody quick? Wasn't gone even as long as she was, that summer when he counted the days. He'd stayed faithful to her then, and no promise to sustain that but his own. Well, it bloody made sense, didn't it--it was all bollocks, she hadn't meant any of it, hadn't told any of them about him, and hadn't wasted any time crawling into another man's bed. 

Couldn't say much for her choice. What she wanted with a bloke like that, too old to be good for more than one a night, Spike couldn't think. 

_Christ_. He'd have the bastard's head off. Right here on the street, devour his bloody heart out of his chest. Like she'd devoured his. 

"Mmmm. I'm sleepy." She snuggled tighter under his encircling arm, her own around his waist. 

"Not far now, my dear." 

"Will you make me some Ovaltine?" 

_Ovaltine? What kind of a kink was that?_

"If you like, of course." 

"I like. I _so_ like. Where's Ovaltine been all my life? Ovaltine and hot water bottles ... ." 

He chuckled. "So many mysteries." 

They turned into a quiet side street. Here it was shady, the large houses nearly all dark. Spike melted along in the shadows, soundless, waiting for his moment.  
  
  
  


Sleepy, happy, her belly heavy and content. Feet a little hurty, but she'd be off them in a few minutes. Hot drink by the fire, telling Clive about the evening, then up to bed. All so good. 

Then the little _ping_ at the base of her skull. 

She slowed. 

Whispered. "Li. Don't say anything. And whatever you do, don't _do_ anything. It'll be perfectly all right." 

He froze. "What will?" 

She pulled away from his grasp, turned. "Sssh. You're about to see me slay."  
  
  
  


She'd felt him, but she didn't _see_ him, and that was her mistake. He wasn't after her. It was the bloke he was after, and she'd left him standing like a great ponce beside one of the tall thick plane trees that lined the street. And he wasn't going to stride out boasting like he usually did to get up a fight. It wasn't a fight he wanted--at least, not yet. 

It was a kill. 

He made a wide circle, skimming whisper-fast across the opposite pavement, well beyond where they stood, then dodging across in the dappled shadows, approaching swift and silent under cover of the immense tree, reaching around to grab hold of-- 

\--nothing. She knocked him back. 

"Lionel--get out of here!" 

He sprang up. Posho _would_ be called Lionel. 

"Oh--! Oh--! My dear, I'll summon help!" 

"I _am_ the help! Now run!" 

_Oh yes, my dear Lionel, run, run as fast as your lanky legs will carry you, an' I'll be faster, an' I'll have your heart between my teeth._  
  
  
  


He couldn't run. He couldn't move. He'd never seen anything so terrifying--extraordinary--exhilirating--in all his life. 

The creature roared and punched her into the tree trunk, but she didn't even stagger. They traded dreadful blows in the darkness at close range, dancing gradually into the center of the road. Lionel's heart seemed to stop for a long moment. He prodded his chest with the heel of his hand, staring. Knowing he really _hadn't_ entirely believed it. Not until now. By God, it was all true. Vampires were real. And this darling little woman fought them as if born to it. 

In a spash of streetlight, he finally saw the thing's face--the feral grimace of nightmare, fangs that gleamed in the sudden glare--just as Uncle Bart described them. 

That's when she cried out--a cry of dismayed surprise. 

"Not so happy to see me back, are you, you betraying bitch! Got a new man already!" 

"Wha--what?" 

"Bit old for you, isn't he pet? Thought you liked 'em silky an' up-all-night." 

"New man--? What, Lionel? Lionel's not--" 

He struck out at her again; she danced back, and kicked him in the jaw. 

He staggered but didn't fall. "Found out about you, I did! Still ashamed of me. Still playin' the bait an' switch! S'finished now, though!" 

The monster knocked her down. Dropped onto her chest, pinning her. 

"Ow! OW! That hurts!" She struggled; her whole body rippled, and to Lionel's astonishment, she threw him off. 

"Ouch? That's what you say to me, you lying cow? _It hurts, it hurts! Ooooh, Big Bad, don't hurt me_!" He was already rolling to his feet like he was made of india rubber. 

She was up too, backing away, still keeping herself between him and the monster, her arms crossed over her chest. She looked so tiny and vulnerable, dwarfed by his trenchcoat, wobbling on her heels. "My breasts are tender." 

An angry guffaw rent the air, ending in a growl that raced up Lionel's spine like fire up a rope. From one breath to the next, the vampire was in her face, snatching her tight against him by two fistfuls of Burberry. "Sore tits! Now _that's_ a new one in the Buffy annals!" 

"It is." She was calm, dangling without resistance in the grip of monster and coat, her feet not quite touching the pavement. "It's because I'm pregnant with our child." 

Time stopped. The vampire stared at her out of his glittering yellow eyes, dreadful mouth agape. 

"What ... what did you say?" 

"You heard me." Her voice was small, and sweet, impossibly young. She threaded her arms around his neck, bringing her mouth right up against the horrible fangs as if they were not there. "Spike ... Spike, what is this? What are you doing? Why didn't you just call me? Or come to my flat?" 

"You kept me a secret. Again! Like aways. Bloody Rupert didn't know about me." 

She started to speak, but Lionel, his courage improved by their reasonable tones, interceded. "She hasn't kept you a secret to _me_. I assure you, she talks about you--so vividly!--every day. In fact, we cannot shut her up. Though we do not try very hard, do we, Auntie?" 

"An' who the buggerin' fuck are you, anyway?" 

"I am Lionel Hinchliffe. Your brother Bart's great-great-grandson. I am your nephew. And have been so very eager to make your acquaintance, William." He stuck a hand out, although both of Spike's were still enmeshed in the coat. 

For a long moment the golden eyes engaged his, in a way that thrilled through every sinew. His knees went weak; any second the demon might drop Buffy and grab him; he'd be powerless to resist. 

Then the enthralling gaze released him, and the monster's bumpy visage gave way with a squelching noise, a melting motion horrible in itself. Lionel blinked. The new face ... extraordinary ... he'd seldom seen a young man so heartbreakingly comely ... and looking so nearly heartbroken. He looked at Buffy as if she was dying in that moment. 

"Oh Spike, please understand--I didn't tell because I didn't know when you'd come to me, or if you would ... and when I was on the island, I called Willow, and she thought I was deluded about you, she kept telling me to leave you alone and come home. I didn't want to put myself through any more of them not believing me, feeling sorry for me ... it was too hard ... . You see that, don't you? But then I met Lionel, who has been so kind to me, and he believed me, and then I knew you gave me a baby and oh Spike I'm so happy about that and now you're here everything will be all right but oh be careful of my breasts they're really ouchy--!" 

He set her down. They stared into each other's eyes as if there was nothing else in the world. Then they were both weeping, foreheads pressed together. 

"Buffy, I failed. My life wasn't to be had again for any price ... . Came here a few days ago, didn't know what to bloody do, was half out of my mind. An' then ran into Giles an' about lost the other half ... it's really me that knocked you up?" 

"Who else would it be? I have no other lover but you. Yes, it's you." She swayed against him, and began to laugh, a little hysterical. "I didn't know if I'd ever see you again, I was so afraid I wouldn't, but then it turned out I had your love right here, inside me," she brought his hand to the bump of her belly, "and nothing was going to take that away from me ... . " 

Lionel extracted a handkerchief to have it ready when she wanted it, doubting that the vampire would have one to offer her. It seemed a shame to intrude on this so private moment, but he could not pull himself away from the astonishing sight. This was the William of all those sepia images in the albums he'd pored over time after time for years. Was, and wasn't ... because that William, though sharing the stature and every facial feature of the man before him, yet lacked so much of the power and animation that made Spike so fierce and male. 

"But what's with you walkin' 'round snugged together with him like sweethearts? Prit'near killed him if you hadn't been so quick--!" 

Lionel started forward. "I am--I assure you--ah, not to put too fine a point upon it--" 

"He's gay as the court jester, Spike. We're _friends_. He calls me Auntie, because you're his uncle, and I'm your fiancée." She paused, gazing up at him out of eyes the size of dinner plates. "I _am_ , right? You know you have to marry me now you've got me up the spout." 

Lionel saw that this question was too much for the addled vampire, and leapt to intercede. "I say! It's awfully late, and we'd all be so much more comfortable at home, wouldn't we?" 

Buffy turned to him; he took the opportunity to press the handkerchief into her hand. 

"Yes. I'm so tired ... ." 

"I can imagine, given your condition ... may I say, darling, your fighting skills--most unexpected--and beautiful to watch. The ... the two of you, like ... it was like a dance ... a blood-tingling, deadly dance." 

"Fred an' Ginger, that's us. Always has been," Spike drawled. 

"Ah! Yes, and you, my dear, did it all backwards and in heels--!" 

She drooped, staggering. "Heels--God!" Buffy kicked them off, and stood in her stocking feet on the pavement, listing. Lionel hastened to retrieve the thrown shoes, and Spike swung her up in arms.  
  


* * *

 

 

"Oh no." 

"What is it?" Buffy said. 

He gazed up at the house, it's stolid white facade nearly unchanged from memory. The last time he'd seen it from this vantage, he'd cursed his brother under the gas-lamp at the garden gate, and gone off with Drusilla, giggling like she had the itch, tucked under his arm. The last time he'd been inside .... 

"I ... I can't. Can't go in there." 

"It's all right." 

"Buffy, you don't know--" 

Lionel was halfway to the door. Hearing this, he came slowly back to where Spike stood planted with Buffy in his arms. 

"She does. Bart wrote about that night, and Buffy knows it all. It was a terrible thing you did then. But I know ... from Buffy ... what you went on to become. How none of us would be alive tonight, if not for your courage, your sacrifice. Of course you'll come inside." 

Lionel's expression was one of simple, solemn kindness. Spike saw the family resemblence clearly now--he was Bart's get, but it was his other brother, Jasper the curate, with his light spirit and sense of humor, whom he most resembled. That same bright mild eye, with its unflinching gaze. That gaze drew him like a magnet up the walk to the door. 

He hesitated again. Inside ... inside was all he'd tried so long to forget, what Giles brought back so vividly with that magic worm, so vivid that even all these years later, it seemed like yesterday. The house where he'd killed his mother and her servants, where, with Drusilla, in every room, every position, he'd defied and defiled everything she held dear, while they waited for her to rise. Where Mother made a mockery of all his filial devotion, and not just that ... shown him what a freak he still was, even as a demon, elevating love above appetite ... . 

That he should ever stand on this threshold again ... and with the slayer in his arms! Panic shot through him. He was an animal--couldn't live with the humans, wasn't like them! 

"Spike. Either put me down or else prepare to be peed on." 

He started, and nearly dropped her. She was on her legs then, and yanked him in the door before disappearing into the shadowy passage beyond the entry hall. He wanted to follow her--had a sudden awful feeling he'd walked into a trap. 

But Lionel was there, putting a hand on his shoulder, steering him gently towards the parlor door. "Welcome home, William Hinchliffe. Come have a drink."  
  
  
  


Spike looked around, dazed. The room was the same. How could it be exactly the same? This wasn't real. There was Mother's favorite chair. There was where she'd stood when he killed her. And there, by the hearth, where he ran her through ... . 

"The textiles are new," Lionel said, from his station at the drinks cart. "We had the big pieces reupholstered just last year. But I'm not surprised it strikes you this way, we really have kept these rooms as they've always been." 

"We?" 

"The generations since Bart. And now my partner, Clive Thornycroft, and I. He's attending some auctions in Zurich, but will welcome you as well when he returns." He offered Spike a glass. "I've lived in this house all my life, except for three years at Cambridge--Magdalene, where all the Hinchliffes go, of course--and one in national service. Do sit down." 

"Bloody hell. An' you say you know what-all happened here? What ... what I did here?" 

Lionel cocked an eyebrow. "I can't help noticing ... you speak a colorful vernacular, William." 

Spike straightened up and faced him. "Because I choose to. Because I am no longer who I was," he said, giving the other man's accent crisply back to him. 

"You never really liked yourself when you were alive, did you?" 

Spike sipped at the Scotch, it burned going down. 

"So many of us don't," Lionel said. "We Hinchliffes have been quite eloquent of our discontents--I've read all the diaries and papers left in the last three centuries, and I feel quite fortunate to be so normal!" 

"'cept for bein' a poofter." 

"Of course." Lionel smiled. "Except for that. Freshen your drink?" 

"Cheers." Spike drained it, held out the glass. Lionel poured him another. 

"I also feel fortunate ... so very fortunate ... to have met dear Buffy. And to learn ... that I'm not, after all, to be the last of the Hinchliffes." 

This news still hadn't sunk in; it startled him afresh. "God ... doesn't seem possible." 

"It happened, I would assume, in the usual way?" 

"Was alive with her for such a short time. Matter of days. What're the odds." He stared at the mantlepiece; how often he'd leaned against it, declaiming dreadful doggeral to his captive mother! He felt sick, and wondered if all this wasn't some evil hallucination, prelude to the eternal punishment he'd avoided this long. He was an evil thing; his awful hungers sang in his veins every waking moment. He dreamed murder in his sleep. He'd been intent on killing this man before him, twenty minutes ago. It wasn't right for him to try to live among people, and especially wrong that he be received back into this house. 

Then Buffy walked into the room, and it stopped spinning. 

She was still in her stocking feet, but the trenchcoat was gone. With her rounder, ruddy-cheeked face and long hair--blonde at the ends and brown at the roots--tumbled over her shoulders, she looked impossibly young, like the girl he'd come to kill in Sunnydale all those years ago. She'd put on a little weight, and it suited her, she had a pair of hips now to support the pooch of her pregnancy, her breasts were rounder than they'd ever been. When she came and fitted herself against his side, butting her head softly into the crook of his shoulder, he felt the heat of her churning cells. She was a ripe tasty fruit, all warmed by the sun. 

"Tired," she pouted. "Li, I know this is so weird, but I ... I just want to take Spike to bed, okay? We can all talk tomorrow, right?" 

He started. "You live here?" 

"No no," Lionel said, "But she stays over often, and we've given her a room of her own. We have so many, after all." 

At once Spike's mind raced up the stairs, made an inventory of the familiar rooms there: Mama's, Papa's. Those of his two brothers. Daphne's and Phoebe's. His own. He'd done--things--with Drusilla in each one of them. And now Buffy was tugging on his hand, leading him up there ... . 

In a husked whisper, he said, "Which?" 

"The Yellow Silk, in the back overlooking the garden. In your time of course all the top floor was servant's rooms, but we've done some renovating up there since." 

Spike exhaled. He hadn't been a young man who stalked the servant girls in their beds--far from it--and had no particular associations with the top floor. 

Buffy said goodnight, and tugged, already moving towards the stairs with sleepy implacable insistence. Spike followed her, feeling as if his heart was juddering in his chest, his eyeballs vibrating, his hand, clasped in hers, about to ignite.  
  
  
  


On the first landing, she paused. "Do you ... do you want to look around at anything here?" 

Spike shuddered. Without comment, Buffy moved on, starting up the second flight, his hand still squeezed in hers. 

The Yellow Silk room was large, and low-ceilinged, with sloping eaves at the end overlooking the garden, and it was indeed yellow, and grey, and oriental, in the way that only two gay men with plenty of money and a nostalgia for the paintings of James McNeill Whistler could make it. 

Buffy dropped his hand as they entered, and began taking off her clothes as if she was alone, and too exhausted to think of anything else. This was an astonishment. Spike stood planted in the doorway. 

"I guess you're not tired, it's the middle of the day for you, huh? You know what I'd really like? For you to hold me while I sleep. Like ... like you did that time before you ... before you saved the world. Only naked, and then make love to me in the morning." She paused, pulling her dress overhead, her hair clinging to the soft wool. "And then I'll hold _you_ while you sleep." She draped the dress across a chair. 

_I murdered five people in this house._

She removed her earrings, tossing them on the dresser. Peeled off pantihose, fingering the red mark left by the elastic on her belly. 

_And you know it, and yet you talk this way, treat me this way ... ._

Elbows out, she reached behind for the clasp of her bra. 

He didn't realize he'd made any sound, but she looked up at him, and a sweet little smile tugged the corners of her mouth. "Sure," she whispered, presenting him with her back. "You do it." His fingers--his whole body--felt so cold--hellish cold--that he was certain she'd cry out in pain when he touched her. But she only dipped her head, gathering the hair out of the way. Submissive, neck exposed, like ... like ... . 

_Oh God._

Helpless, he pressed a kiss to her nape. She shivered, a long deep body shiver. He opened the clasp. In one fluid motion Buffy shrugged the bra off onto the floor, and drew his hands around to take its place. 

Her breasts filled them, hot, heavy, bigger than they'd ever been. They pulsed against his palms. She made a small sound, kittenish, as he kissed her neck again. "Or ... we could make love now. I can sleep later." Her hand stole around and closed over the bulge in his jeans. Kneaded it gently. "I didn't know if you were going to come back to me. I missed you so much these last hundred-twenty-four days, Spike. Hundred-twenty-four yesterday, hundred-twenty-five today. Except today doesn't count." 

Grasping her shoulders, he turned her fast. She let out a low cry at the sight of him. The game-face felt hot too, not like her flesh but like the disfiguring burn of holy water. Every bump and ridge screaming. He growled. "Spike's back, yeah." _Undead, monstrous, craving your blood, everybody's blood, craving night and mayhem and death death death._ "Here he is. Here he is, as he ever was." 

Her eyes widened. He looked for disdain, revulsion, the old expression of impatient disgust that was so much hers. She lifted her hands to his horrible face. "As he ever was, yes, thank God. They gave you back to me." She tugged his head down, pressed her lips to the brutish forehead. "I want to make love to you. Make love to you just as you are this minute. I want you to bite me if you're hungry. I want to give you everything." 

He willed her shining eyes to dim. How could she accept him like this? She was the Slayer. 

"I promise you it's all right. If I never saw your other face again, it wouldn't matter, I'd love you just the same, as long as I live." She drew him to her breast. "Kiss me here." 

He couldn't; instead he sank to his knees. Her hands were in his hair. His cheek pressed against her belly, he could hear the life inside her building itself, the coursing of the blood. Feel the deep reassuring thub of her heart. Her warm womansmell enveloped him; soft wintery sweat, some delicate flowery perfume, the oceanness of her cunny, whisper of dyed wool and soap and memory. And even as he loved it, loved her, he imagined tearing her belly open with his fangs and bathing in her blood. 

His tears scalded him. 

She curled over him, her lips against his hair, and whispered. "Don't cry. There's no need. Take off your clothes. Let's be naked, and be together." 

He watched her through his demon eyes that missed nothing. Watched her watch him as he undressed slowly, feeling the whole house and all its ghosts intent on him. Her expression was open, bright with relief and anticipation. Her lips quivered; she licked them as he disclosed himself. She kept her eyes on his, unflinching before their yellow stare. When he dropped his jeans, the belt buckle clanking on the floor, and stepped out of them, she smiled. 

"You are so beautiful. Your golden eyes, your fierce beautiful face, your ... everything." She backed slowly to the edge of the bed, sank down, her hand outheld to him. "I need you so much. I can't wait to show you how much I love you." 

"How can you need this?" His growl rolled towards her like a brush fire racing across a field. For a second she trembled. But she only put out her other hand. Two outstretched arms, beckoning.  
  
  
  
This close, he could smell the fetus inside her, smell its blood which was not Buffy's blood. It confused him. Well, _she_ confused him--always had, really, confused, confounded, amazed him. Never more so than right now, when she lay spread open for him on the yellow silk sheets of this big bed, a strewn treasure cask, entirely undefended. She smiled as he came into her arms, and smiling, pressed kisses to his jaw, neck, shoulders. "My lover," she murmured. "My lover, you're here." Sighing as his mouth touched her, the fangs grazing her radiant skin, neck, chest, slope of the breast. Lips closing over the high tight nipple, hard as a bud in February. She did not flinch from the nearness of those terrible points. He retraced the path, tonguing his way back to her neck, and when he mouthed the tender spot below her jaw, where the vein pounded so enticingly, she sighed again. 

He drew back. "You really wouldn't stop me, would you?" 

Calm. Proud. "No." 

"An' if I took it all? Drained you?" 

"You wouldn't." 

"Was gonna tear your gent's face off earlier." 

"No. You really weren't. I know you wouldn't have hurt him. Or me. Not really. But it was foolish of you to try to scare us like that." 

He growled again. "You never were so soft in the head, in the old days, Slayer! You never forgot what I was, then." His mind raced on a million things as she caressed him: a gentleman didn't impose on his wife when she was in a delicate state ... Buffy couldn't be his wife when he had no home to bring her to, nothing to keep her on ... _a baby,_ Christ, a beast like him was no fit company for a baby, let alone ... 

He shrugged off her questing hand. 

She knelt back. "You're all wigged." 

"You shouldn't be fighting in your condition. Might've been hurt before. Might've--" 

"Spike. I could've _so_ taken you. I mean ... the sore breasts thing was pretty much a fake-out." 

"Oh." 

"So you'd stop and listen to me. If I was fighting some other vamp--I'd have slain. I'm still me, even though I'm pregnant." 

"And I'm still me, even with the damned soul. I'm not safe, Buffy. Was gonna kill him because he had his arm around you. My mind's full of ... I'm a monster. Everything I've done since we parted, tryin' to get it back, just showed me what I really am. What I'll always be." 

"Spike, you haven't been a monster for quite a while." 

He saw her clench her fists, not because she wanted to strike out, he realized, but to keep from touching him. He could feel the fluttering of her heart in the air between them, and her frustrated arousal. Her disappointment smelled like something singed. 

"I haven't been _Spike_ for quite a while." 

"That's not what I mean. I ... I never told you this, but ... when you got your soul, when you were trying to make amends to me . . ." She couldn't hold back anymore, her hand skimming lightly over his arm, so all the hairs stood up. "You were more to me, for being evil and turning away from it of your own will, than any man could be who'd only ever been good. It took a long time--too long--for me to sort my feelings out. To let myself be in love with you. Spike, by time you died in the high school--I swear to you, I've never loved any man the way I loved you. When I missed you afterwards, I didn't think about wanting you to be human, or innocent, or any of that. I just wished I could've had real time with you, to be your girl." She curled a hand around his arm. "Let me be your girl." 

He snarled in her face, fangs bared. "Shall I make you mine with these?" 

She looked into his yellow eyes, unblinking. 

"I'm immortal, I haven't a friend on this bleeding planet, why shouldn't I turn you and have you for my mistress forever?" 

"Oh Spike." She curled her hand around his cheek, her thumb softly traversing his lower lip. 

"Well? Shall I turn you? I'd have you then!" 

"Spike, if it was really what you wanted ... but you wouldn't like me that way, I know." 

"And if I did? Like you that way?" A wave of disgust made him want to wretch. How could she treat him this way, be so sweet and accepting when it ought to go against her every instinct? He couldn't stay in this house, that he had no right to enter. It might devour him the way he'd devoured its inmates that night. Bloody fucking nightmare of a house, the last possible place he'd ever expect to find her esconced. If he needed a big obvious sign from The Powers That Be that Buffy was not for him, he couldn't have asked for more of a stunner. 

She put soft consoling kisses on the grotesque ridges of his game-face. "Sweetheart. You're going a mile a minute, you're in so much turmoil. Just stop now, okay? Rest. We can just rest together, and see how things are in the morning, yeah? We ... we've done that before, remember?" 

"Yeah, all right." 

Nostalgia was going to be her biggest weapon in this struggle.  
  


* * *

 

 

The tiny noise woke her. Spike was opening the window. Her heart lurched and dipped in her chest, but she swallowed that down, and spoke quietly into the dark. "You didn't say before. Why were you here in Kensington? Have you been stalking me for days? Must have been--I haven't been to Willow's flat since Tuesday." 

She heard him put a leg over the sill. 

"Spike?" 

She could just see him, a blacker shape against the black, crouched on the windowledge. 

"Do you think I'd've come anywhere near here if I'd known you'd be here?" 

She waited. 

"I just wanted a look at the outside of the house once before I--" 

"What? Before you what?" 

Silence. 

"I don't understand why you came to London if you weren't ready. The way you kissed me before ... how could I mistake that? You _want_ to be with me." 

Silence. 

"Is it the child you don't want? I thought you did. On the island, it was you who talked first about--" 

"I have to go." 

She slid to the edge of the bed. "Where are you staying?" 

"At--nowhere." She felt him inclining outward towards the moist cool night air; in another moment he'd fall down into the garden, and be gone. 

He was fast, but she was faster; she caught her hand around his neck. 

He was vamped out--again? Still? For the first time it occurred to her that maybe he was warning her off for a real reason. Maybe he was on his way now to hunt and feed. Had been doing so all the time he was gone. 

There was no way to know. Nothing to tell her. Except for the feeling in her heart, that it just wasn't true. 

Could she trust that? 

He clearly didn't trust her heart, or his own. 

He could've slipped out from her encircling touch, dropped to the ground. But he was completely still. The damp air misted her face. 

"Did you play down there in the garden, when you were a little boy? With Jasper, and Daphne, and Phoebe?" 

He was quiet, unbreathing. She rested her forehead against his temple. 

"Did you, lover?" 

"I'm a vampire. Vampires don't have childhoods." He said it like a lesson he'd learned off by rote. 

"What games did you play?" 

"Don't remember." 

He remembered. She knew he remembered everything; memory was the engine of his agony of mind. 

"Lionel showed me your photographs, the journal, and all your letters. I read everything. I kept thinking of what you said to me after we left the ship. How I didn't know anything about you. But I realized those things of William's weren't what you wanted me to know. And I don't think it was the sordid details of all your adventures and kills, either. Was it?" 

Another pause. 

Finally, a little head shake that she felt against her own. 

"You want me to know you the way you know me. Know my heart, my spirit, what I really am under the crusty exterior. That's what you're so hungry for. Am I right? And you think I don't. You think I can't?" 

He touched her hand then. But only to draw it down from his neck, press her back. In that instance it came to her, a flash that made her flinch and left her flooded with comprehension and tenderness. What did he know about recognizing affection offered to him, he who, all through his existence, had taught himself to exist only on his own unrequited burning? He'd never received what he gave with such determined, single-minded genius. Drusilla had stayed with him for over a hundred years, but she wasn't capable of caring for him in anything like the same unswerving measure as he did for her. And by time she herself had caught up to her feelings, it was too late--she hadn't been able to make him understand how she cherished him. He'd long since given up on that. Now here they were again, starting nearly from scratch. He was bewildered and incredulous and frightened; sure that her declarations were tempting him out onto a vast black lake of gelid ice that would bear his weight only until he was too far from the edge to keep from being sucked into the frozen dark. 

Her eyes stung. He felt so small and precious to her caught in the midst of his vast loneliness, and she didn't know how to say it. She wanted her assurances to pass to him through her lips pressed against his face, through her hands on his body, and the surge of emotion that made her cheeks burn. "Spike, listen--" 

In the next instant he was gone. She heard him hit the lawn with a muffled thump, felt him glide towards the fence at the bottom of the garden. Leaning out into the chill, Buffy called, "You just don't know what it feels like to be loved! You only have to trust me a little!" 

She perched on the sill for a few minutes, as the wet air coalesced into real rain, and let it silver her bare skin. Far off a dog barked, and a siren dopplered by. The garden was still except for the faint pattering. He was gone, but there was no way he hadn't heard her. 

When she went back to bed, Buffy left the window open.  
  
  
  


The thump awoke her. She opened her eyes in the deep grey of incipient dawn to see him tumble through the open window head-first. 

Buffy sprang up. "Spike!" 

"Bloody hell!" 

In the next moment another figure swarmed into the room and leapt at him; they tumbled to the floor, struggling, as a third person slipped in. Buffy switched on the bedside lamp. 

In the sudden brightness, the intruders glanced up. 

" _Hello!_ He's invited here--who the hell are you two?" 

But she knew who they were. She'd only met them briefly before she set out for her round-the-world odyssey, but she recognized Lovleena and Fiona, two of Giles' hand-picked little posse of London slayers. 

She knew they recognized her. 

The pair of them, stakes in hand, gawped. She realized this was probably more because she was stark naked than because of the booming imperiousness of her voice, but she didn't care: she had their attention. 

Spike shoved Lovleena off, and stood up. "Like the lady says, I'm invited here. So piss off." His delivery, Buffy noticed, lacked his usual bravado. 

"What is this?" she demanded. 

The two kept their eyes carefully level with her head, as she made no move to cover herself up. "We're hunting William The Bloody," Lovleena said. 

"And you're harboring him," Fiona added. "Giles warned us that might happen. That if he somehow got to you, you'd try to protect him." 

Spike had alluded to this earlier, but in the tumult she hadn't taken it in: he'd seen Giles that evening. Insteading of alerting her to Spike's mysterious reappearance, Giles preferred to send his slayer protegees out on a hunt. 

The deception cut her. Even after all these years, it showed her that when it came to her love life, he still didn't trust her judgement. 

"Yeah," Lovleena said. "He said you were soft on him." 

"That's right," Fiona nodded. "Your tragic flaw, he called it. I just call it disgusting." 

"He said _what?_ Listen you two, you're going to go back to Giles, and tell him from me that--" 

Buffy didn't get to say what they were going to tell Giles, because it all happened so fast. Lovleena, taking advantage of their distraction, leapt for Spike. Cartwheeling between them, Buffy grabbed at the girl's wrist, sending the stake flying, and the two of them tumbling to the floor. Fiona took the opening, launching herself stake-first at Spike's chest. He twisted at the last second, taking the blow, with a bellow of pain, in the ribs instead of the heart. 

Scrambling up, Buffy seized the fire poker and came around at them, swinging. She caught Lovleena in the back of the knee, sprawling her again. "How dare you! How dare you come into my home to--this is murder!" 

"We're _slayers_!" 

Buffy raised the poker. "Spike is not the enemy! He saved the world! You do _not_ hunt him! Now get out!" 

With a quick glance at each other, the pair swarmed for the window and were gone. 

Spike lay on the floor, shocky and white, a hand clapped over the wound. Buffy knelt beside him, trying to see where he'd been stabbed. 

"Tigress," he murmured. 

"God--those bitches! Are you all right?" 

The wound, of course, was far from fatal. But tears poured from his staring eyes. She wasn't quite sure why he was crying--from the pain? That wasn't at all like him. He'd holler if you hurt him, but he was otherwise stoic, this she knew. 

He wept silently, his face knitted with an eerie hopelessness. 

"Sweetheart ... don't. It's all right. You're safe now. I'll get some bandages--we'll clean this off, and--" 

He shook his head. "What am I? I'm a thing righteous slayers are sent to kill." 

"No! No, that's false. They didn't know." 

"They knew. They knew, what you should too." 

"Why did you come back here, then? Why didn't you let them dust you out there somewhere, where I'd never see?" Crying now herself, Buffy touched her forehead to his. "Spike, Spike, you _know_ you don't deserve to be hunted, or slain. You don't deserve to be despised. I'll deal with Giles. But don't you despise yourself. Do you hear me? I forbid it." 

"Fucking hell, Buffy. Don't want you fightin' my battles." 

"Then we'll fight them together. Don't cry, don't cry, it's too sad for me."  
  


* * *

 

 

"He's in our house?" 

"They weren't down when I left for work--I expect they won't emerge all day. I could _feel_ the pheromone cloud pushing its way down the stairs when I came out of our room this morning." 

"Yes, but--he's _in our house_? The--the vampire is in our house." 

"Clive, he's perfectly all right." Lionel leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. Clive always scolded him for doing this, but Clive was in Zurich, and it was too early for anyone to be coming into the shop and catching him at it. Besides, this posture seemed the most fitting for talking about this most delicious and extraordinary news. 

"But he's a real vampire." 

"He's Great Grand-Uncle William." 

"Who murdered Great Great-Grand-Mother Anne. And her servants. And--almost--you. Li, you did just tell me he tried to grab you last night--what did you think he was going to do if he caught you--give you a kiss?" 

"He had the wrong end of the stick, that's all. He thought Buffy had taken up with someone else. As soon as he understood his mistake, he was mild as milk. And Clive, I _wish_ you could've seen how little Buffy dealt with him--she fights the way Margot Fonteyn danced. It was the most incredible thrill, watching them. And when she told him she was _enceinte_ , and he kissed her ... I nearly swooned." 

"He's in our house. I've always understood, vis-à-vis vampires, that one doesn't want them in the house--one is supposed to be safe within one's four walls if only one doesn't _invite_ \--" 

"Clive, really. You know Buffy explained it all to us--the soul, and how he only drinks animal blood. Speaking of which, I'd better phone up Cluff's and have them send some round. Buffy says he eats as well. What do you suppose a vampire would like to eat? I could do a rack of lamb with shallots, or perhaps boeuf bourguingnona--" 

"Lionel." 

"Dear heart." 

"You sound so very very happy." 

"Well, I am." 

"I'll try to get an earlier flight back." 

"Do, darling."  
  


* * *

 

 

Spike was warm, and nearly relaxed, in a good clean bed with the one woman in all the world snugged up against him smelling like fresh-baked bread, for the first time since the night of the volcano. 

Since leaving her, he'd mostly slept rough. Traveling wasn't easy or comfortable for a vampire in these modern times, unless he had money. He had a valid passport, but the balance in the account at the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank that stood William Hinchliffe in good stead for his life of breadfruit and fried fish on the island wasn't equal to circumnavigating the globe without magical assistance, or any assistance at all. He'd never questioned that account, from which a remittance came by postal order every month, enough to pay for beer and cigarettes and canned goods, laundry, motor oil, whores and other monthly incidentals, but not enough to leave paradise. Who'd set it up? The same Power that set up the passport, and the sweet little life far away from memory, conscience, remorse, love. 

With nearly no money, he'd been as ruthless as he could stomach. But no amount of head-bashing, of others' or his own, no manner of incantation, ordeal, fighting other demons' battles, or questing (he hadn't even told Angel about the six months he'd spent in a sort of gulag in a place called Quortoth; by this world's reckoning he was back in the wink of an eye) brought him what he sought. 

Angel had sent him off to London on his own private vamp-safe jet, courtesy of Wolfram & Hart and for the sake, he felt sure, not of himself but of Buffy. 

All this raced through his mind in the first waking minute. The stab wound in his side gave off a steady dull throb, reminding him that he was, as ever, a target of the righteous. The rightous who cared nothing for who he thought he was, but only for the irremediable truth about him. That he was an unclean thing. 

For a little while on the island he'd been a man: clean, innocent. Also ignorant, cut off from the whole world. Tucked away from the big struggle, living a life that really didn't mean anything. Stupid to think of it as a reward for anything, it wasn't. A joke, surely that was the joke of one Power perhaps amusing another. Not really about him, or for him, at all. 

Why, Buffy asked last night, didn't he just let the slayers kill him? 

He wasn't really sure. It was humiliating, to be hunted like that. Humiliating to have to bolt back to the only safety there was for him, one slayer protecting him from another. As if he was her dog running home with his tail between his legs. 

Christ, this was a wretched existence. 

Buffy wriggled her warm bum back against his groin, and let out a contented sigh. His cock stirred, pressing against her; she wriggled some more, and he knew she was awake. 

She twisted around to show her pretty sleep-drugged face, all smiles. He'd never known such Buffy smiles before. 

Her hand closed around his erection, warm, proprietary. "Feels like you're glad to see me." 

"Always." Helpless against this desire, his body's blind instincts. When he'd lived in this house as a boy and a man--though he'd never really been a man, had he?--every cockstand came wreathed in shame. The pleasure of release, when he failed to deny it, always fraught. All that blown away by Drusilla, but it waited for him here, in the atmosphere of this blasted house. Buffy esconced in it. Hard cock was all she'd ever wanted from him, deny it as she might--hard cock, hard fists. 

She caressed it now like it belonged to her, a pet she could fondle as she pleased. 

"I have to go to the bathroom, but hold that thought." 

She rose, leaving him to breathe the cloud of her fragrance released by the disordered covers. Shortly after, he heard a toilet flush, and then she was padding back, streaks of sunlight striping her naked body from the imperfectly covered windows. She went around the large room, adjusting the drapes. 

Yawning, she said, "Are you hungry?" 

"I'm all right." 

"How ... I'm ashamed I don't know this, but there was so much else going on when you were in my basement ... how often do you like to feed?" 

"S'all right, Buffy. Had a good coupla pints yesterday. Every few days is plenty for me." 

"I'll stop by the butcher later, then." She was standing near him now, fiddling with a Teasmaid set up on one of the bedside tables. "Stupid thing is supposed to be automatic." 

"Forgot to flip the timer switch last night." 

"Oh. Right. So ... when you feed, do you prefer ... pig, or cow?" 

What a little housewife she'd turned into. She was so solemn, even nude and with her ruffled hair in her face. 

"Whichever. They're both nasty." 

"Are they really? I'm sorry. And--God, I forgot! How is your ... the wound?" 

She bent over him then, drawing the sheet down from his chest. "How does it feel?" 

"Leave it alone." 

"No, let me see. Li might have some salve we could put on it. It won't bleed again if I pull this off, will it?" 

"It's fine, leave it be." 

She pulled the bandage away. "This should've closed up more by now, no? I thought you were all with the fast healing." 

"It's only been a few hours." 

"You really _should_ feed. Would you--" 

" _Not_ from you. Get that filthy thought out of your head. Can't imagine why you're so eager for it, anyway, Slayer." 

This seemed to stun her. "Do I sound eager? I'm not. It's only that ... " She trailed off, blinking. "Okay, yeah. I would like it. I don't know why I should hide that from you. I would like it if you fed from me. It would be something ... that meant a lot to me." 

" _No._ Christ." 

"Okay, Spike, never mind. Stay put, I'll get a fresh bandage." 

While she was fussing around in the bathroom, he lay back, staring at the ceiling. His erection had crashed completely at the mention of feeding from her. He could feel the sun, thought of it, how he could put an end to all this if he just went back to the window. Dropping down again into the garden like he did last night, exploding into fiery ash when he hit the ground. She'd cry and mourn, he couldn't kid himself she wouldn't ... but then the baby would come, and she'd love it, and all the people who loved her would be there and it would be all right. Maybe after a while there'd be some other bloke too, who'd understand her and give her what she needed. If he was gone she'd really be free to take up with that Mr Right. 

Like she'd been free, all these years. Believing him dead and yet waiting for him anyway. What was it about him, made Slayer into such a little fool? 

Darling little fool, with her crazy declarations and her smiles and her tears. Telling him he didn't know love. Asking him to trust her. 

_Happiness is a moral obligation._ He was tempted to tell her this, the weirdest saying ever out of his old sire's mouth. But the mention might remind her of bad memories, and there was no point risking that. 

"Raise up your arm again, so I can do this." She was back, fresh gauze and tape in one hand, a wet washcloth and tiny pot of Vaseline in the other. "I'll try not to make it smart." 

And there he was, enormous twat, in tears again. No control over himself. Sobbing like a little child. 

"Oh Spike. It's okay. I know you hate this, but it'll be okay." 

"You don't know me at all. I'm not what you think at all." 

"Oh hush." She cleaned the wound with the cloth, her touch infinitely gentle. "You showed yourself to me back in Sunnydale, remember? I know who you really are, William Hinchliffe. I know your secret heart." She pressed her lips to his breastbone. "Whether it's beating or not, that's just a minor detail." 

"Buffy--stop." 

"I won't. I won't stop loving you. Threat, or promise--it's your choice." She kissed his mouth, but to his relief, she didn't try to start anything. "Go back to sleep. I want you to rest up until that doesn't hurt anymore. I'm going to go out and do a couple of errands while the day is young."  
  


* * *

 

[[NOTE: the following scene needs to be extensively revised--right now it doesn't yet reflect Buffy's INTENSE rage--I wrote this before I came up with the idea of Giles sending slayers after Spike. Right now I'm not sure how Buffy should behave here.]]

Giles, we need to talk." 

He wheeled around. Buffy stood behind him--he wasn't sure where she'd come from. The Council's headquarters was part of an impregnable row of attached houses on Gower Street. Had she been waiting on the other side to dart across the street and accost him? This wasn't like her. 

"Of course. Good morning. Come in, we'll sit--" 

"I know you saw Spike last night." 

"You-- _what_? But ... how can you know that?" 

"He told me." 

Giles sprang up. "Oh God. He--" 

"Why didn't you call me?" 

"Why? Buffy ... I ... well, it was because ... ." He began to pace, his mind racing. "How did he find you?" 

"I think ... I think he was looking for his old house." 

Giles didn't quite understand this, but it wasn't important. "Buffy, I didn't tell you because the last thing I thought you needed was to--" 

She held up a solemn hand. "No, you didn't tell me because you'd made a unilateral decision a long time ago that I'm not fit to choose my own allies. So even after all your yakkety yak about me needing to stand on my own two feet, here you are, years later, still treating me like a little child. What, did you think I'd forget what you did before the last battle in Sunnydale? How you _betrayed_ me?" 

"Betray--? Buffy--I didn't--" 

"Oh, you did, Giles. What you do to my ally, my _friend_ , you do to me." 

"Be that as it may--it was quite apparent that the Spike I saw last night was not an ally or a friend--he was--" 

"You don't know what he was." 

" _Buffy._ " 

"All right, look. There's some things I've kept from you too, Giles. I guess it's time for me to come clean. Let's go inside."  
  
  
  


She was grim, and brimming with something that was mostly rage--her crystal-hard slayer rage, turned on him full-force. And yet there was something else besides, that tempered it. Her radiance. Though she'd admitted to withholding information, Giles felt no sense of guilt from her as she followed him up to his office. She was all righteousness. 

The light on his desk phone was lit--voice mail messages. Buffy caught him glancing. "I can tell you right now, they didn't off him." 

"Eh?" 

"Your posse--they failed. I sent them packing. And I'm not going to forgive you soon--the way you've handled this." 

"Buffy, I did what the situation, as I saw it, demanded. I--" 

"Giles, you listen now. I didn't tell you what happened on my sailing trip. I found Spike living on a volcanic island in the Pacific. Well, not Spike exactly. I found a live man who looked like him. He didn't remember me, or that he was ever a vampire, but we both felt an immediate strong attraction--a connection." 

"Buffy! But ... when I saw him last night--he was decidedly a vampire. He threatened me, in game face." 

"I heard you threatened him too." 

"Buffy, I did what I--" 

" _Listen_." 

He listened--in amazement and pain--to her tale of meeting William Hinchliffe, their affair, how her attempts to remind him of the past made him angry. The encounter with Drusilla, how he regained his memory. Their engagement, the volcanic eruption, evacuation, and what befell him at sea: the loss of his humanity. 

"Giles, the change devastated him. I thought he might try to kill himself. He couldn't accept it, couldn't stay with me, even though I told him and told him that it didn't matter. It doesn't matter. But he left to try to find some way to get made mortal and human again." 

"And failed." 

"He's not a failure. He's my Spike." 

Giles's thoughts clotted around a few words: _A man. Drusilla. Marry. Vampire. His._ He tried to feel his way towards some reaction. "Buffy--I'm afraid you might be mistaken about him. He seems to have lost his soul. Last night--he was the monster of old." 

"No, Giles. That's not true." 

"Buffy, I know you want to believe--" 

"He told me about running into you. He was walking around, trying to get up his courage to come to me. It was a coincidence, he didn't know the Council headquarters was here. He wants you to know he would never hurt Olivia or your children. Or you. Though he's angry that you targeted him. And--he didn't say this, but I could see it--he's hurt. He's hurt that after the ordeal of regaining his soul, none of us gave a shit. Especially you. I think he believed--I know I used to believe--that your sense of fairness was bigger than that." 

"Buffy, this is ... why didn't you tell me before? About finding him?" 

"I told Willow--I called her from the island. And she thought I was having a delusion. She spoke to me as if I was crazy and had to be handled gently. I couldn't deal with that. I didn't want you to get on my case about it too. None of you have ever understood what he is to me." 

"I see." He'd been so sure that all this--her taste for darkness and undead lovers--was in her past, never to be returned to. Spike was safely dead. Why wasn't he safely dead? When would this ever end? 

"I realize it's a lot to take in." 

"It is." 

"When he was still human, when we were making our plans to get married, Spike talked about needing to support me. He still needs that. He'd got very old-fashioned--sweet, really--ideas about what a man is, how a man takes care of a wife. He needs to work, he needs purpose, for his self-respect. Which is at a really low ebb right now. Giles, the council can use him, his experience, what he knows about the demon world. That's got to be invaluable for us." 

"I'm not sure that--" 

" _Giles._ I need you two to reconcile, I need everybody to accept him, not just accept him, _welcome_ him. He saved the world, he went in and did it without hesitation, and it wasn't because he thought he'd get to fuck me afterwards. Pardon my French, but we're talking straight now. He helped us because he was one of us, even though we didn't acknowledge that. And now he's back again, deeply lonely and scared, hating being undead. He needs friends, he needs work, he needs to feel like a man." 

"Buffy--" 

She drew herself up in her chair. "I'm going to be Mrs William Hinchliffe, and you can either be Mrs Hinchliffe's friend, or not. But if it not--" 

"Are you threatening me?" 

"Uh ... yeah. This is make or break." 

_Make or break._ Giles fingered the paper knife on the blotter in front of him. "I don't quite know what to say." 

"Say, _oh Buffy, I'm so happy to see you're finally going to be with the man you love_. Say you'll finally give Spike his due. Say you'll dance at our wedding." 

"I ... ." He turned, stared out the window at the fallow back gardens of the Gower Street row. 

"Giles. You do realize, this baby is his." 

He hadn't realized it. It should've been the first conclusion to draw, but he was so overwhelmed by her confessions, he hadn't made the connection. Dear Lord. If the dratted fellow was actually the father of Buffy's child ... 

He rose from his chair. No way he could hold out against that. Even if he tried, Olivia and Willow and the others almost certainly wouldn't let him. He came around the desk, bent over her. "My dear." 

She accepted his embrace--not, he felt, with relief and gratitude, but with grace and affection. 

"There's something else." 

"I don't know how much more I can take," Giles said, attempting a laugh. 

"This part should be easy to swallow. I want you to meet my new friends. Who are really relatives, of a sort." 

"What do you mean? Have you discovered some cousins you didn't know about?" 

She smiled. "No. I discovered Spike's only living descendent. His great-great-grand nephew. His name is Lionel Hinchliffe. He's the one I've been spending so much time with lately. Him and his partner, Clive."  
  
  


* * *

 

 

Lionel didn't usually go home for lunch, but today was special, being the first one of having a vampire under his roof, so he shut the shop for a couple of hours. He wouldn't want to confess it to Buffy or Clive, but his curiosity was nearly unbearable, and he could not stay away, even though he was mostly sure that at one in the afternoon William would be fast asleep, probably with Buffy beside him, behind closed doors. Vampires slept in the day, after all. And he was sure neither of the two must've slept much overnight. 

He let himself quietly into the kitchen, and listened. Not much use trying to be stealthy; the fellow must be able to hear and smell everything going on in the house. Still, he tried to mount the stairs without a noise, peering into the drawing room and the parlour. Everything was just as they'd left it last night. The glass the vampire drank from was on the mantlepiece. For the first time it occurred to him to wonder if being undead made things taste different--was Scotch the same for him? From that, Lionel's mind leapt to ... well, how could one not wonder? ... what must it be like, to lie with such a creature? He was, according to Buffy, wonderful in bed. But he was also, again according to her, cool to the touch, _cool--well, he's always room temperature,_ she'd said, _but he sort of feels cool. Especially, y'know, when I'm all heated up. And he's dry, because vampires don't sweat, and they don't have much of an odor unless they're really filthy. Spike doesn't smell of much of anything when he's naked._ How odd that must be, Lionel thought, slowly mounting the stairs towards the second floor, when the smell of a man is so often one of his first charms. Clive's smell had not, over the years, lost any of its allure for him, and he still, on the nights they were separated, liked to sleep on Clive's pillow rather than his own. So: cool, dry, and what must it be like, a vampire's cockstand? Would it throb? How could it? For that matter, how could he have a cockstand at all? Yet Buffy had indicated that he did--whenever he liked--and that his prowess was, in her tipsy late-night words, _totally awesome_. 

Lionel smiled at himself. This wouldn't do--wouldn't do at all--one didn't have naughty speculative thoughts about one's ancient relations. It was unseemly. But then he'd always been good at turning everything into sex. He was chuckling as he swerved into his bedroom. 

William stood beside the bed. He was naked to the waist and in game-face. 

Lionel backed up to the doorway, gripped the lintels to keep his fear-watered knees from folding. "I say--do you--do you--" He didn't know what he meant, so stopped. Didn't know what the vampire meant either, standing there like that. His reassurances to Clive on the phone felt rather hollow at the moment. Nothing between him and those fangs but Buffy's promise about him, and empty air. 

The vampire looked at him, and those yellow eyes, so deep set and glowing, were absolutely unreadable, unknowable. There barely seemed to be an intelligence there, none Lionel could fathom, anyway. Nothing in them but hunger and mistrust, like a wolf in winter. 

The terrible gaze released him then, and returned to the elaborately carved headboard of the old bed. He put out a hand and traced the shapes with his fingertip. "Doing a bit of reminiscing. Expect you know what it is to fuck your beloved in your mama's bed, come to think of it. S'what you did yourself, innit?" 

"Inasmuch as this bed has always been here, and when I was a child, this room was my father and mother's." He swallowed down the painful knot in his throat. "That's how it is in all families that are fortunate to have nice things, and pass them hand to hand down the generations." 

"Ah, but you didn't fuck him all over the house knowing how she'd tremble an' faint if she could see what you were, the dirty bad thing you were doing." He paused, staring at the pillows of the neatly made bed. "'Cept, I 'spect you did. Still, didn't sap your mother's life from her throat an' leave her lying on the floor downstairs before taking your fellow up here to debauch the maternal sheets. Did you?" 

"Ah ... that is to say ... no. Clive and I met after mother passed, as it happens." 

"Not talkin' about this Clive, in particular," he growled. "Whatever boy you first brought home to have in this house. Special thrill, doing the nasty with anothe bloke right here, wasn't it? Sacred place this. Knew your mother got fucked here herself, but you didn't _know_ it. Not a thing a son can ever really take on board, is it? Every son's mother is a sort of virgin, right?" 

"I--" 

"Got you hot, got you hard, doin' your lad right here, where she'd get the vapors if she knew. Did she know?" 

"I don't think so. She died while I was in the army." 

"I wanted to defile every single room. I was brand new then an' drunk with it--couldn't yet choose which was more glorious--that I could rip a man's throat out soon's look at him, or that my sire would lift her skirts an' let me into her at a word. First snatch I ever had, if you can believe it. What a bloody revelation!--Learned sex an' death all in one night, an' thought they were both set up just for me!" 

Lionel spoke across him. "I don't mean to interrupt, William, but ... are you ... do pardon my asking ... but are you planning to do violence to me? Because ... because ... you are frightening me rather." 

All at once the fang face was gone, and William's shoulders sagged. "Done all the violence in this house I ever mean to do." 

Lionel sagged too. His armpits and hairline were soaked, and his heart was like a pinwheel in his chest. "That's all right, then." 

With a new expression, William came towards him. Lionel forced himself not to retreat. Even with his face of melting beauty, the essence of _force_ that came off the vampire was powerful. 

"Whatever became of Jasper? My brother Jasper? You're like him, you know." 

"Am I?" 

"Very much. Always such a friendly, cheerful, easy goer. One of those believer types who really is happy because Jesus loves him." 

"Every scrap of writing he left behind was quietly pious and rather dull. He kept his Fellowship all his life and was quite content. Died in his eighty-eighth year, I believe. Long-livers, we Hinchliffes." 

"No wife then." 

"I think he was like me that way too." 

"I suppose so. Would explain some things." William shrugged. "But can tell you're not quiet, nor pious, nor dull. You're a goer, aren't you?" 

"I--that is--" 

William grinned then. "Sucked plenty of cock myself, pet, took it up the bum a time or two as well, an' liked it fine, so don't be fooled by my brash teasing. 'S me covering up for being emotional. You're all right, you are." 

"Well ... thank you." 

"Don't thank me. It's me ought to thank you. You've been kind to Buffy, made her feel at home. Can see she's let to be herself here, the way she can't with the others. That's an immense thing." 

"She is a pleasure to me. To me and Clive both." 

He smiled then, a wistful smile that made William look very young and mild. "Look, I'm sorry I scared you just now. Wasn't my intention, but you couldn't know that." 

"I imagine there's plenty for you to be emotional about now. And here, especially." 

"It's all a terrible muddle, yeah." Lionel hoped he'd say more. But he only shrugged again. "Buffy's gone out, making her rounds. I'm meant to be sleeping." 

"Of course. I really do need to get back, so I won't keep you from your rest any longer-- But do feel free to move around the house. In a way ... well, one cannot help feeling it's--" 

"If you're gonna say I have a right to be here or any of that tosh, forget it. I said yes to a demon when I could've said no, an' I brought her here knowin' full well what we'd do. Got the least right in the world to be at my ease here." 

"Oh. Yes, that's of course, but as we said last night--" 

"Listen, mate. I've got a soul, an' I've got reasons--compelling ones--to keep my urges in check. But don't you forget I'm nearly a hundred fifty years old, with appetites you cannot fathom, an' I could scoop the beating heart out of your chest before you take your next breath, if I wanted to. I've always been the impetuous type--s'been my downfall, really." 

"Oh--" Lionel started to back up. 

"Not saying this to threaten you--I'm obliged to you for your welcome." 

"Then ... then why? Why are you saying this? Because it certainly sounds like a--" 

"A caution. I love that woman like blazes, an' I will do everything I can to take care of her." William raised a hand, cupped the curve of Lionel's cheek, a touch that surprised him by its tenderness, and that he made it at all. "An' I'm glad to find you, because I thought I had no kin left in this world. It means something to me. But I want you to remember I'm not only your long-lost uncle, an' I'm not the prince in any bleedin' fairytale. I'm a master vampire who wanted to be a man, an' was for a little while, an' knows he never will be anymore." 

Lionel realized he was holding his breath. He let it out in a rush. "Don't you think a man is anyone who behaves like one? Whether he's a demon or--or not?" 

William patted his face then, and turned away. "Fat lot you know about it, mate." 

  
  


* * *

She found him on the bench under the trellis at the bottom of the garden. It had rained earlier, and everything was still dripping. 

He seemed very far away, gazing up through the overhanging vines, maybe at the windows of her room, maybe at the moon floating low amidst clouds, maybe at nothing. She'd made no effort to sneak up on him, but he didn't turn when she came up, until she put a hand on his shoulder. 

She felt so at home here, as if she'd known Lionel forever. But this had to be a whole new world of weird for Spike, coming back to William's house, dealing with all the ugly memories it brought up. And not just the ones about turning his mother. His whole life. She knew from the diaries that William wasn't a happy man. Being here couldn't be good for her chances of getting Spike to let go of his past and focus on their future together. 

"Hey." 

He glanced up then. The frown line between his brows smoothed out. "Where've you been all day? Expected you back sooner." 

"Mostly with Willow. She was back from her retreat and was all 'I never see you anymore.' I tried to call you but you didn't pick up." 

"Didn't think it was my place answering the phone here." 

"We'll get you a mobile." 

"Oh, yeah. S'just what I need." 

She didn't like the bitter little chuckle, but then he drew her onto his lap, cuddled her against him, and she liked that. There could never be too much of that. He sighed when she laid her cheek against his neck, and reached up to pull the clasp from her hair. It tumbled into his hand; he wrapped it round and drew it across his face. 

"Back when I first loved you, and you despised me, I used to fantasize about this. About having the right to touch your pretty hair." 

"Oh Spike. Did you really have such gentle thoughts about me then? When you were evil?" 

"I'm always evil. Still evil. But, yeah. Wanted to touch your hair, play with it. Bury my face in it. 'Course, I also wanted to chain you up and fuck you like a dog 'til you screamed." 

"Oh, of course." She snuggled closer. 

"So, I'm gonna see the whole lot of 'em on Saturday." 

"Yeah. Well, not Xander and Faith. But I'll send them an email. We could think about going to visit. I kinda want to compare notes with Faith on the whole pregnant slayer thing." 

He didn't reply immediately. 

"Y'know, we should maybe go in. Clive's back, he wants to meet you. And dinner will be ready soon." 

"You really want us both to go an' visit Mr and Mrs Harris?" 

She glanced up at him. He met her questioning look with an expression she couldn't parse, but it made her uneasy. "Uh, yes?" 

"Suppose we should, really." 

"What's the matter, Spike?" 

He gathered her closer. She was aware of her own heartbeat, where with any other man she'd feel his. She could remember his, just a few months ago. He'd been warm and alive and talking about marriage and babies and a home and a life. Whereas now all he did was remind her of his past. 

"Nothing, pet. Just ... realizing you an' me have never been together when there wasn't some crisis on hand. That one little bit of peace we had together back in ought-three, was in the midst of biggest war of your life." 

"So?" 

"So, dunno quite how it's done now. Just bein' your lover when there's nothing more pressing we have to do. Fact is ... I never thought I'd get to be your lover at all. Not really." 

"We'll make it up as we go along. That's what'll be so great about it." 

"I don't know what things you like. Never got to take you out, give you a gift, none of that--" 

"It's all before us. The fun part." 

He squeezed her tighter, his face in her hair. "I love you so much, Buffy. God, I love you--" There was a sob in his voice that tore at her. He sounded so forlorn, and why, why should that be, when they were together, when there was nothing to stop them anymore? 

"I know, Spike. You make me so happy." 

"Do I, petal?" Spike slipped a hand up her skirt, along her inner thigh. Buffy shivered. 

"Cold? Sorry." 

"It's kinda chilly and damp out here. It's not you," she said, although it was him--his hand held no warmth at all. He was so sensitive now, about his state. Always referring to it. It made her sad. 

He came up against the barrier of her pantihose. 

"You should wear stockings an' garters. Otherwise what's the good of a skirt at all?" 

"You'd like that?" 

"Yeah." 

"Okay," she smiled, "Then I'll get some tomorrow." 

His thumb pressed her through the panties; she sighed and let her thighs fall open for a moment, then got to her feet. "Buffy--don't go in yet--" 

"I'm not going anywhere." She reached up to peel her underwear down; slipped her shoes off long enough to free herself from the hose, then sat on his lap again. "There. You can touch me now." 

This time she was ready for the chill of his fingers, didn't hiss at their touch. They warmed a little in her warmth, their explorations so gentle that she could hardly believe, even now, that he was the same who had come to Sunnydale to kill her, so long ago. She couldn't imagine how she'd lived these last dozen years knowing he was lost to her forever. There was such worship in his hands, in his gaze, adoration and understanding. No one knew her as he did. She knew how impenetrable she was, how even her friends didn't quite comprehend her. She'd always been apart. But he knew, and showed it in his every look, his every touch. How had she lived without this? She arched, spreading her thighs wider, excitement spiraling up so she was suddenly flushed and sobbing. 

"Ssh, ssh ... what's the matter, sweetness?" 

"Noth ... nothing. Don't stop." Tears ran down her cheeks, she wasn't sure why, but there was a chasm open inside her that made her feel lost and alone, even though he was here. She was aware now as she wasn't before she found him, of what she'd lost when she let him go at the Hellmouth. She was feeling the terror of the close call, the last-second rescue. Safe, but with her heart in her throat and the image of barely-averted disaster reverberating behind her eyelids. Nothing else would begin to fill that up but him. She spread her thighs wider. "Hold me tight. Yes, there, _Spike_ \--" 

He caressed her with a strange delicacy, a lightness that made her flesh throb under his fingertips, made her shake. She clung to him, her head on his shoulder, eyes shut tight, taking deep breaths of the earthy wet scent of the garden. He murmured in her ear, "I've got you, I've got you. There ... ah ... your sweet quim, all wet for me ... your little clit's all hard an' wanting. Oh Buffy. Oh Love, you're a sweet warm little thing. You like this, yeah? Pretty girl. I've got you. I've got you. Come for me, petal. Let go an' come." 

She seized up and moaned, shuddering, crying, sliding down his lap. She pulled his hand away. "Stop now." 

"Better?" 

She nodded, although she didn't know what she felt, or rather didn't know why she should feel so sad, now he was here. His face, chalky pale in the moonlight, swam as her eyes filled again. She whispered. "Spike. Don't leave me again." 

He was quiet for a moment. 

"Spike--" 

"You were doing all right without me, though, weren't you? Saw you t'other night with Lionel, you were happy. Bubbling with it." 

This was true, but she had to dispute it, because there was nothing good in his pointing it out. "Just because I--" 

"Got plenty of friends an' supporters, don't you? Can have your baby right here an' you know he'll make a home for you both. He adores you. The Scoobs too, they'll rally 'round like they always do. Lots of aunties and uncles your baby will have." 

" _Our_ baby. Spike, _ours._ We're going to make a home together, and raise our child." 

Again, he was silent. She remembered the time when she'd have hauled off and hit him for making her feel this way. All she could do now was wipe at her teary eyes with the back of her hand. "You know it's yours, this baby. You understand that, right?" 

He nodded. 

"So ... why aren't you glad? You're scaring me." 

"Not trying to scare you, petal." 

"Look, I get that it's weird for you." She paused. He was still holding her tight, and she still wanted to be held, no desire to leap up, to distance herself for a struggle, even as she was filled with fear. "When I fell for Angel, I never really thought about the future. Who does, when they're sixteen, seventeen? There is no future, and at the same time, there's nothing _but_ time, it feels infinite. I felt that, even though I knew I'd probably die before I was twenty. And then when I fell in love with you, _finally_ , and had to let you go to your destruction ... well, by then I knew that's how my life was, that I didn't get to keep people I loved the most. So now, here we are, and I'm not the only slayer anymore, and I'm thirty-four, and we're going to have a child, and you're undead. And it _doesn't matter_ at all to how I want you, how I love you. But I get that it makes you sad and desperate, and that makes me sad and desperate too. We can't be normal like we thought we would back on the island, but there's nothing stopping us from being _us._ " 

Still he was silent. 

"Is there? Spike--is there?" 

Lionel's voice floated out to them from the french doors at the back of the house. "Yoo hoo! Cocktails." 

She got to her feet, her knees feeling like broken hinges, and pulled her skirt down. "We should get ready for dinner, and introduce you to Clive." 

Spike caught her hand, and kissed it. 

  
  


* * *

Spike glanced down. "Haven't worn a suit since I saw _The Wild One._." 

"Well, then I expect it's about time, William. Which of these ties do you fancy?" 

They were both black silk, to match the shirt and suit and shoes. But one was iridescent, and the other had a pattern woven into it. "Not gonna wear one--s'like a bloody leash!" 

"I think you should," Lionel said, imperturbable. He chose the iridescent and looped it around Spike's collar. "It's bothersome that you can't see yourself in the glass, but I assure you, you're stunning, and this get-up wants a tie to polish it off." 

Spike glanced at the heaps of shopping bags and boxes on the bed. New clothes for him were Lionel's suggestion; he'd offered to do the shopping, taking the money Spike gave him--what he could spare from his limited resources--and returning with too many things, every single one of them more costly than the total of what he'd been delegated to spend. 

The suit and shirt--black, slim-fitting--were Brioni. 

"How fortunate it doesn't need tailoring," Lionel said, picking a bit of lint off the shoulder. "We always do prefer bespoke, but I can see that the reflection thing could be a real problem for you at the tailor's." 

"I can't afford this," Spike murmured, as Lionel finished up the knot and stepped back, looking pleased. "I've nearly no tin 'til I figure out how to earn some. Just used to steal whatever we needed in the old days, but ... ." 

"Ah ... I think this will please Buffy very much, seeing you this way," Lionel said, stepping slowly around him. "Don't you?" 

Spike honestly didn't know. 

"We can take these things back, if you really insist," Lionel said, "but do accept what you're wearing as my gift." 

"S'kind of you," Spike said, already dragging at the tie-knot, "but I don't think I can." 

"You know, I don't actually have to work. The business does well, of course, but it's primarily a labor of love for both Clive and me. I've got family money more than enough to live in high style. And no heir I must marshall it for." He looked Spike in the eye. "Hinchliffe money, Mr Hinchliffe." 

If he could blush, Spike knew, he'd be crimson. "Not takin' any of your bleedin' money." 

"Of course, but the point is, there's no reason you shouldn't wear this beautiful suit, and please your darling girl. You want to please her, I know. And you want the others--her friends--to see you in a different light. What better way than to present yourself differently?" ....  


  
**This story is unfinished and likely to remain so ...**   



End file.
